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5ktxn6 | 26 | Just inherited large sum of money looking to order a tesla tomorrow. As the title says I recently inherited a large sum of money from a distant relative s decade-old investments. It came as quite a surprise and I myself have invested most of it then kept an amount as spending money. I had no idea what to purchase aside from a long vacation tour around Europe but have been watching alot of Tesla videos on youtube lately. I have an older car and it s time to upgrade. So I decided that on my birthday tomorrow I m going to order a Tesla Model S. I love how they look and my only requirement is the Model S with the longest range. I believe this is the Model S P100D correct? I can t wait to order it I love the blue color with carbon-colored rims. Thanks! | If you just inherited it maybe you should force yourself to have a cool down period live as you always have and think about what is the smart thing to do with the money? Otherwise your dead on about the p100d being the most range however the 19 s will yield the most range over the 21 s. | You lucky duck! Enjoy your Tesla :) and yes the P100D Model S currently has the longest range. If you re not huge into performance and you can afford to wait a little longer it might be worth it to wait for the non-performance 100D to come out. It will probably have more range and be significantly cheaper than the P100D. But there s no telling when that will actually come out. I d expect it in the next 1-3 months though. | 132 | 5 | 806 |
5ktxn6 | 26 | Just inherited large sum of money looking to order a tesla tomorrow. As the title says I recently inherited a large sum of money from a distant relative s decade-old investments. It came as quite a surprise and I myself have invested most of it then kept an amount as spending money. I had no idea what to purchase aside from a long vacation tour around Europe but have been watching alot of Tesla videos on youtube lately. I have an older car and it s time to upgrade. So I decided that on my birthday tomorrow I m going to order a Tesla Model S. I love how they look and my only requirement is the Model S with the longest range. I believe this is the Model S P100D correct? I can t wait to order it I love the blue color with carbon-colored rims. Thanks! | If you just inherited it maybe you should force yourself to have a cool down period live as you always have and think about what is the smart thing to do with the money? Otherwise your dead on about the p100d being the most range however the 19 s will yield the most range over the 21 s. | At present the Model S P100D is the one with the longest range. | 132 | 6 | 807 |
5kvad8 | 398 | A guy in a Tesla kindly gave me the right of way today as I was walking I waved at him as a thanks. Turns out I was waving at the Tesla not him. Guy didn t even notice me. He was texting on his phone on Autopilot. So really I was thanking the Tesla. The future is fucking here. | Context? I didn t think pedestrian detection worked on AP1 yet and I m curious where you were crossing that would ve brought the car to a stop while still being in Autopilot. | Stop waving at the douche on the phone! | 46 | 13 | 808 |
5kvad8 | 398 | A guy in a Tesla kindly gave me the right of way today as I was walking I waved at him as a thanks. Turns out I was waving at the Tesla not him. Guy didn t even notice me. He was texting on his phone on Autopilot. So really I was thanking the Tesla. The future is fucking here. | A woman walked in front of my car the other day without looking up from her phone. She very slowly walked across the street stopped halfway looked at me and waved then carried on slowly across the street. People including Tesla drivers need to stop looking at their phones while driving or in the street. | Stop waving at the douche on the phone! | 41 | 13 | 809 |
5la9uc | 140 | Just had my 2 year maintenance completed. With minimal effort you can save roughly $600 on tires. I ve noticed in the sub a lot of tesla owners do not mind wasting money. But if you have an extra hour you can go to Les Schwab and save $600 and get a 60 000 mile warranty on tires that cost $800 rather than the Tesla tires that cost $1400 with no warranty. Edit: some misspelled words and costco seems to be the tire store of choice for this subreddit. | It s almost universal that the OEM dramatically overcharges for tires. Tires for my Wranglers were about $200 tire from a Jeep dealer and $150 from American tire. Tires for my S2000 were $600 from Honda dealers and $450 from American tire. This is even the exact same model of tire. | Which tires? 19 ? | 36 | 3 | 810 |
5la9uc | 140 | Just had my 2 year maintenance completed. With minimal effort you can save roughly $600 on tires. I ve noticed in the sub a lot of tesla owners do not mind wasting money. But if you have an extra hour you can go to Les Schwab and save $600 and get a 60 000 mile warranty on tires that cost $800 rather than the Tesla tires that cost $1400 with no warranty. Edit: some misspelled words and costco seems to be the tire store of choice for this subreddit. | It s almost universal that the OEM dramatically overcharges for tires. Tires for my Wranglers were about $200 tire from a Jeep dealer and $150 from American tire. Tires for my S2000 were $600 from Honda dealers and $450 from American tire. This is even the exact same model of tire. | warranty | 36 | 10 | 811 |
5lukba | 92 | Q4 Deliveries Tesla Q4 2016 Production and Deliveries PALO ALTO CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01 03 17 -- Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) produced 24 882 vehicles in Q4 resulting in total 2016 production of 83 922 vehicles. This was an increase of 64% from 2015. Tesla delivered approximately 22 200 vehicles in Q4 of which 12 700 were Model S and 9 500 were Model X. When added to the rest of the year total 2016 deliveries were approximately 76 230.Our Q4 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct. Because of short-term production challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December from the transition to new Autopilot hardware Q4 vehicle production was weighted more heavily towards the end of the quarter than we had originally planned. We were ultimately able to recover and hit our production goal but the delay in production resulted in challenges that impacted quarterly deliveries including among other things cars missing shipping cutoffs for Europe and Asia. Although we tried to recover these deliveries and expedite others by the end of the quarter time ran out before we could deliver all customer cars. In total about 2 750 vehicles missed being counted as deliveries in Q4 either due to last-minute delays in transport or because the customer was unable to physically take delivery. Even where these customers had already fully paid for their vehicle we still did not count these as deliveries in Q4. In addition to Q4 deliveries about 6 450 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will be counted as deliveries in Q1 2017. Vehicle demand in Q4 was particularly strong. Q4 net orders for Model S and X which were an all-time record for us were 52% higher than Q4 2015 and 24% higher than our previous record quarter in Q3 2016. Tesla vehicle deliveries represent only one measure of the company s financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of quarterly financial results which depend on a variety of factors including the cost of sales foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles. Source: Tesla Motors Inc. | [Q4 deliveries in context](http: i.imgur.com qSDKdEK.png) | Every year Tesla would say they are different that they can t book it until it is delivered blah blah blah. It is understandable if this is the first year but this is the 3rd year I am hearing it. Just set expectation to be lower so that you will not need to pull that trick every single year. | 45 | 3 | 812 |
5lukba | 92 | Q4 Deliveries Tesla Q4 2016 Production and Deliveries PALO ALTO CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01 03 17 -- Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) produced 24 882 vehicles in Q4 resulting in total 2016 production of 83 922 vehicles. This was an increase of 64% from 2015. Tesla delivered approximately 22 200 vehicles in Q4 of which 12 700 were Model S and 9 500 were Model X. When added to the rest of the year total 2016 deliveries were approximately 76 230.Our Q4 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct. Because of short-term production challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December from the transition to new Autopilot hardware Q4 vehicle production was weighted more heavily towards the end of the quarter than we had originally planned. We were ultimately able to recover and hit our production goal but the delay in production resulted in challenges that impacted quarterly deliveries including among other things cars missing shipping cutoffs for Europe and Asia. Although we tried to recover these deliveries and expedite others by the end of the quarter time ran out before we could deliver all customer cars. In total about 2 750 vehicles missed being counted as deliveries in Q4 either due to last-minute delays in transport or because the customer was unable to physically take delivery. Even where these customers had already fully paid for their vehicle we still did not count these as deliveries in Q4. In addition to Q4 deliveries about 6 450 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will be counted as deliveries in Q1 2017. Vehicle demand in Q4 was particularly strong. Q4 net orders for Model S and X which were an all-time record for us were 52% higher than Q4 2015 and 24% higher than our previous record quarter in Q3 2016. Tesla vehicle deliveries represent only one measure of the company s financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of quarterly financial results which depend on a variety of factors including the cost of sales foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles. Source: Tesla Motors Inc. | [Q4 deliveries in context](http: i.imgur.com qSDKdEK.png) | 83 922 produced in 2016 76 230 sold 6 450 in transit... Assuming no vehicle was in transit at the end of Q4 2015 (unlikely) it s still 1 200 extra vehicles produced. Is it for the showrooms test drives or are they creating some amount of inventory? | 45 | 7 | 813 |
5lukba | 92 | Q4 Deliveries Tesla Q4 2016 Production and Deliveries PALO ALTO CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01 03 17 -- Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) produced 24 882 vehicles in Q4 resulting in total 2016 production of 83 922 vehicles. This was an increase of 64% from 2015. Tesla delivered approximately 22 200 vehicles in Q4 of which 12 700 were Model S and 9 500 were Model X. When added to the rest of the year total 2016 deliveries were approximately 76 230.Our Q4 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct. Because of short-term production challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December from the transition to new Autopilot hardware Q4 vehicle production was weighted more heavily towards the end of the quarter than we had originally planned. We were ultimately able to recover and hit our production goal but the delay in production resulted in challenges that impacted quarterly deliveries including among other things cars missing shipping cutoffs for Europe and Asia. Although we tried to recover these deliveries and expedite others by the end of the quarter time ran out before we could deliver all customer cars. In total about 2 750 vehicles missed being counted as deliveries in Q4 either due to last-minute delays in transport or because the customer was unable to physically take delivery. Even where these customers had already fully paid for their vehicle we still did not count these as deliveries in Q4. In addition to Q4 deliveries about 6 450 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will be counted as deliveries in Q1 2017. Vehicle demand in Q4 was particularly strong. Q4 net orders for Model S and X which were an all-time record for us were 52% higher than Q4 2015 and 24% higher than our previous record quarter in Q3 2016. Tesla vehicle deliveries represent only one measure of the company s financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of quarterly financial results which depend on a variety of factors including the cost of sales foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles. Source: Tesla Motors Inc. | [Q4 deliveries in context](http: i.imgur.com qSDKdEK.png) | Sucks they missed guidance stock will probably take a small hit for that. Bears look for any reason to bash despite deliveries up tremendously year over year. | 45 | 8 | 814 |
5lvdc1 | 92 | Any Tesla fans watching the Faraday & Future flagship car unveil today? Supposedly it should be the direct competitor to Tesla. Which is a good thing as I feel that Tesla has no actual direct competition and a direct one should motivate Tesla to do better. Like Apple and Google. It is even said that the prototype won against a S100D. Link to stream s page here: https: www.ff.com en Edit: It has started. | WHEN THE DEMO DOESN T WORK I CAN T UNDERSTAND THE VP **WHAT S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW** | I think they are years behind. Let s c how competition spans out | 73 | 2 | 815 |
5lvdc1 | 92 | Any Tesla fans watching the Faraday & Future flagship car unveil today? Supposedly it should be the direct competitor to Tesla. Which is a good thing as I feel that Tesla has no actual direct competition and a direct one should motivate Tesla to do better. Like Apple and Google. It is even said that the prototype won against a S100D. Link to stream s page here: https: www.ff.com en Edit: It has started. | WHEN THE DEMO DOESN T WORK I CAN T UNDERSTAND THE VP **WHAT S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW** | I wonder if this is their hold music. | 73 | 2 | 816 |
5lvdc1 | 92 | Any Tesla fans watching the Faraday & Future flagship car unveil today? Supposedly it should be the direct competitor to Tesla. Which is a good thing as I feel that Tesla has no actual direct competition and a direct one should motivate Tesla to do better. Like Apple and Google. It is even said that the prototype won against a S100D. Link to stream s page here: https: www.ff.com en Edit: It has started. | WHEN THE DEMO DOESN T WORK I CAN T UNDERSTAND THE VP **WHAT S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW** | ###& #009 ######& #009 ####& #009 Acronyms initialisms abbreviations contractions and other phrases which expand to something larger that I ve seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ABS]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz0oe3 Last usage )|Anti-lock Braking System| |[CAN]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz14d6 Last usage )|[Controller Area Network](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Controller_area_network) communication between vehicle components| |[DC]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz0mbe Last usage )|Direct Current| |[EPA]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz0mbe Last usage )|(US) Environmental Protection Agency| |[HP]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz7bor Last usage )|Horsepower unit of power 0.746kW| |[Lidar]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz3ike Last usage )|[LIght Detection And Ranging](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Lidar)| |[P100D]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dc05lmh Last usage )|100kWh battery dual motors available in Ludicrous only| |[P100DL]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz06ht Last usage )|100kWh battery dual motors performance and Ludicrous upgrades| |[frunk]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbyzsj7 Last usage )|Portmanteau front-trunk| |[kWh]( r TeslaMotors comments 5lvdc1 dbz7qss Last usage )|Kilowatt-hours electrical energy unit (3.6MJ)| ---------------- ^(I m a bot and I first saw this thread at 4th Jan 2017 02:48 UTC.) ^(I ve seen 10 acronyms in this thread )[^the ^most ^compressed ^thread ^commented ^on ^today]( r TeslaMotors comments 5m68ji)^( has 13 acronyms.) [^\\[FAQ\\]](http: decronym.xyz ) [^\\[Contact ^creator\\]](https: reddit.com message compose?to=OrangeredStilton& subject=Hey +your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^\\[Source ^code\\]](https: gist.github.com Two9A 1d976f9b7441694162c8) | 73 | 2 | 817 |
5lwxc3 | 100 | Just saw two very sexy cars on FF keynote. Watching the FF keynote and so far I am most enjoyed the MS and MX shown there :) | That presentation was horrible but I m rooting for FF to succeed. It would be good for EV s in general. More players more awareness higher quantities lower cost structures better pricing. Go FF! | lol Totally agree! :-) | 65 | 4 | 818 |
5lwxc3 | 100 | Just saw two very sexy cars on FF keynote. Watching the FF keynote and so far I am most enjoyed the MS and MX shown there :) | That presentation was horrible but I m rooting for FF to succeed. It would be good for EV s in general. More players more awareness higher quantities lower cost structures better pricing. Go FF! | If that is the final interior then this car is not a family car is more high executives car | 65 | 6 | 819 |
5lwxc3 | 100 | Just saw two very sexy cars on FF keynote. Watching the FF keynote and so far I am most enjoyed the MS and MX shown there :) | The only thing missing from the FF 91 reveal was Mariah Carey. | lol Totally agree! :-) | 59 | 4 | 820 |
5lwyao | 30 | FF91 vs Tesla Model X Viewing the Faraday Future presentation this evening from the perspective of a new X owner and father of a toddler and infant the rear doors of the FF91 appear to be poorly designed for carseats. And what about cargo space? With that lidar in the front I don t imagine there being much of a frunk. I m sure there s a trunk- wonder if it ll fit a double stroller. I hope the end product ends up being more versatile than it appears to be thus far so it appeals to a more varied market. For the sake of the EV market I d really like FF to succeed. | It s clearly a $200k car specifically made for millionnaires. | I also wonder as a parent of a young toddler if it is as safe as the Model X S. Nothing about safety was mentioned. | 39 | 12 | 821 |
5m1hxk | 22 | Is Tesla going to match beat the 238 miles-per-charge of the Bolt in the base Model 3? I am really hoping for a base range of 250. What do you guys think the chances are? | The issue is that the Bolt s 238 mile range rating is based on the 5 cycle EPA testing regimen. It favors city driving and punishes those that use more energy for acceleration and conversely gives a pass to those that use more energy at higher speeds. For the Model 3 and for long distance BEV owners the issue with range is usually long distance travel at high speeds. Therefore the range at 75 mph is far more important than the range while driving around downtown. You don t usually need 200+ miles of range while driving around downtown. The EPA 5 cycle tests and the NEDC tests do not reflect the most common range anxiety issue. The Model 3 has to make real world Supercharger jumps. That means 140-150 miles of range at 75 mph in the cold or the heat with a full cargo and with some battery degradation. If you look at the EPA ratings on the Model S the city and the highway range MPGe ratings are not very different. The Model S 75D is 102 city and 105 highway. The highway range is actually higher in that test than the city range. For the Bolt the city MPGe is 128 but the highway MPGe is 110. If you look at the composition of the EPA 5 cycle test: http: www.fueleconomy.gov feg fe_test_schedules.shtml The high speed test averages 48.37 mph. It does hit 80 mph but only briefly. It does not reflect a steady state 75 mph on cruise control. Therefore the EPA range is not very interesting when trying to determine the viability of jumps between DCFC stations. At least it is a somewhat consistent cross comparison tool but you have to know its limitations. The Idaho National Labs AVT does perform steady state testing: https: avt.inl.gov content pubs-az And the Model S is one of the most efficient at highway speeds... more efficient than the BMW i3 at roughly 65 mph. I expect the Model 3 to be extremely efficient at highway speeds but at this juncture unclear how it will rank on the EPA range metric against other long range BEVs. Part of it is the type of construction as Tesla likely can t use nearly as much aluminum in the cheaper vehicle. | So Elon Musk said that 215 will be bare minimum he guarantees that however EPA range might be much higher. Also battery tech is changing so much that it might go up by just that fact. My guess it will be 230 miles... | 40 | 2 | 822 |
5m1hxk | 22 | Is Tesla going to match beat the 238 miles-per-charge of the Bolt in the base Model 3? I am really hoping for a base range of 250. What do you guys think the chances are? | The issue is that the Bolt s 238 mile range rating is based on the 5 cycle EPA testing regimen. It favors city driving and punishes those that use more energy for acceleration and conversely gives a pass to those that use more energy at higher speeds. For the Model 3 and for long distance BEV owners the issue with range is usually long distance travel at high speeds. Therefore the range at 75 mph is far more important than the range while driving around downtown. You don t usually need 200+ miles of range while driving around downtown. The EPA 5 cycle tests and the NEDC tests do not reflect the most common range anxiety issue. The Model 3 has to make real world Supercharger jumps. That means 140-150 miles of range at 75 mph in the cold or the heat with a full cargo and with some battery degradation. If you look at the EPA ratings on the Model S the city and the highway range MPGe ratings are not very different. The Model S 75D is 102 city and 105 highway. The highway range is actually higher in that test than the city range. For the Bolt the city MPGe is 128 but the highway MPGe is 110. If you look at the composition of the EPA 5 cycle test: http: www.fueleconomy.gov feg fe_test_schedules.shtml The high speed test averages 48.37 mph. It does hit 80 mph but only briefly. It does not reflect a steady state 75 mph on cruise control. Therefore the EPA range is not very interesting when trying to determine the viability of jumps between DCFC stations. At least it is a somewhat consistent cross comparison tool but you have to know its limitations. The Idaho National Labs AVT does perform steady state testing: https: avt.inl.gov content pubs-az And the Model S is one of the most efficient at highway speeds... more efficient than the BMW i3 at roughly 65 mph. I expect the Model 3 to be extremely efficient at highway speeds but at this juncture unclear how it will rank on the EPA range metric against other long range BEVs. Part of it is the type of construction as Tesla likely can t use nearly as much aluminum in the cheaper vehicle. | Not needed in my opinion. There are lots of countries and cities that are so high in density that even just 200 miles of range will be very effective. I don t live in that environment myself and won t have nightly charging access so the magic number (with upgrades) is 300 miles of range for my situation. But for many people their commute in these dense cities may only be 5-10 miles and take 1-2 hours. An EV is going to be great for them even without access to nightly charging. | 40 | 2 | 823 |
5m1hxk | 22 | Is Tesla going to match beat the 238 miles-per-charge of the Bolt in the base Model 3? I am really hoping for a base range of 250. What do you guys think the chances are? | The issue is that the Bolt s 238 mile range rating is based on the 5 cycle EPA testing regimen. It favors city driving and punishes those that use more energy for acceleration and conversely gives a pass to those that use more energy at higher speeds. For the Model 3 and for long distance BEV owners the issue with range is usually long distance travel at high speeds. Therefore the range at 75 mph is far more important than the range while driving around downtown. You don t usually need 200+ miles of range while driving around downtown. The EPA 5 cycle tests and the NEDC tests do not reflect the most common range anxiety issue. The Model 3 has to make real world Supercharger jumps. That means 140-150 miles of range at 75 mph in the cold or the heat with a full cargo and with some battery degradation. If you look at the EPA ratings on the Model S the city and the highway range MPGe ratings are not very different. The Model S 75D is 102 city and 105 highway. The highway range is actually higher in that test than the city range. For the Bolt the city MPGe is 128 but the highway MPGe is 110. If you look at the composition of the EPA 5 cycle test: http: www.fueleconomy.gov feg fe_test_schedules.shtml The high speed test averages 48.37 mph. It does hit 80 mph but only briefly. It does not reflect a steady state 75 mph on cruise control. Therefore the EPA range is not very interesting when trying to determine the viability of jumps between DCFC stations. At least it is a somewhat consistent cross comparison tool but you have to know its limitations. The Idaho National Labs AVT does perform steady state testing: https: avt.inl.gov content pubs-az And the Model S is one of the most efficient at highway speeds... more efficient than the BMW i3 at roughly 65 mph. I expect the Model 3 to be extremely efficient at highway speeds but at this juncture unclear how it will rank on the EPA range metric against other long range BEVs. Part of it is the type of construction as Tesla likely can t use nearly as much aluminum in the cheaper vehicle. | I really hope so. 240 (what I expect base range if they care to beat it) > 215 (obviously) | 40 | 3 | 824 |
5m6kud | 755 | Dear Tesla please make a weather app for the car. u ElonsVelvetJacket if you re listening. Partner up with weather channel or accuweather or whoever. I would love to push a button and see a detailed radar on the big screen. | Even better overlay it on the Google maps. But to do that Tesla needs a better--way better--browser. | Weather underground is also a service that could work with tesla. | 164 | 10 | 825 |
5m6kud | 755 | Dear Tesla please make a weather app for the car. u ElonsVelvetJacket if you re listening. Partner up with weather channel or accuweather or whoever. I would love to push a button and see a detailed radar on the big screen. | Once we have Waze we can let the engineers work on this... | i am surprised this isnt a thing already. i wouldnt think itd take much to have it refresh every once and a while. and it could help the vehicle prepare for extreme conditions. | 53 | 3 | 826 |
5m6kud | 755 | Dear Tesla please make a weather app for the car. u ElonsVelvetJacket if you re listening. Partner up with weather channel or accuweather or whoever. I would love to push a button and see a detailed radar on the big screen. | Once we have Waze we can let the engineers work on this... | Yes. Yes. YESSSSSSS!!!! | 53 | 4 | 827 |
5mdnrs | 28 | Prediction: 9 days or less to ElonsVelvetJacket sighting. I m thinking we ll see the jacket here by January 15 and they ll either introduce a new option feature or a small price cut for X S across the line. Either 100D (nonP models) HUD or Price drop of at least $1k across the line. (because of the end of unlimited supercharging) [Edit: It was less than 9 days but subtracted a feature rather than adding: https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5nnsta bye_bye_ventilated_seats ] [Edit 1 16 17 **I** **WAS** **WRONG!!!** (The jacket only took away ventilated seats this time and did not announce new feature or price cut)] | Tesla has never cut X S price across the line and I doubt they ever will. | I can t see a price drop after they just increased the price of the 60 in November. Maybe the top models but what s $1k on a 115k car... | 31 | 2 | 828 |
5n3khd | 67 | Why is Tesla Panasonic producing round batteries at the Gigafactory? Wouldn t square cells be a more efficient way to construct a rectangular battery pack? Sorry for the stupid question. :( | There s no such thing as a stupid question! ^(but they are the easiest to answer) The simplest answer is twofold: Cost and safety. Cylindrical cells are very cheap and easy to manufacture. Take cylinder pack with anode cathode that s rolled up add electrolyte cap and soak age. Done. Prismatic (square) hard cells do exist but they have a higher manufacturing cost because machines hate corners. Circular cells can be drawn with a simple press out of a single piece of metal. Prismatic cells need to be bent then welded sealed and leak tested. On top of that you can t just roll your anode cathode en masse. You must now fold it (more complicated machining) and size it. On the safety side of things pressure hates corners. A Cylindrical cell has two points of failure (the top and bottom corners both round with the top being weaker than the bottom) that are very strong and can withstand pressure. Safety vents are placed so the final failure point can be controlled but the cells are very tough. Prismatic cells have 12 (!) points of failure with 9 of them being very weak (the top and bottom edges and the welded seam). A weaker vent would be needed to control the failure point leading to a product more prone to failure. However we know prismatic cells exist (Samsung makes a bunch for starters). So on a cost benefit analysis usually looking at energy density and wasted space in a product a prismatic cell may be a better use. In Tesla s case not so much for a simple reason you may have overlooked: The wasted space between cells in a Tesla pack is used for the active cooling system. Cheers! | http: batteryuniversity.com learn article types_of_battery_cells | 121 | 2 | 829 |
5n3khd | 67 | Why is Tesla Panasonic producing round batteries at the Gigafactory? Wouldn t square cells be a more efficient way to construct a rectangular battery pack? Sorry for the stupid question. :( | There s no such thing as a stupid question! ^(but they are the easiest to answer) The simplest answer is twofold: Cost and safety. Cylindrical cells are very cheap and easy to manufacture. Take cylinder pack with anode cathode that s rolled up add electrolyte cap and soak age. Done. Prismatic (square) hard cells do exist but they have a higher manufacturing cost because machines hate corners. Circular cells can be drawn with a simple press out of a single piece of metal. Prismatic cells need to be bent then welded sealed and leak tested. On top of that you can t just roll your anode cathode en masse. You must now fold it (more complicated machining) and size it. On the safety side of things pressure hates corners. A Cylindrical cell has two points of failure (the top and bottom corners both round with the top being weaker than the bottom) that are very strong and can withstand pressure. Safety vents are placed so the final failure point can be controlled but the cells are very tough. Prismatic cells have 12 (!) points of failure with 9 of them being very weak (the top and bottom edges and the welded seam). A weaker vent would be needed to control the failure point leading to a product more prone to failure. However we know prismatic cells exist (Samsung makes a bunch for starters). So on a cost benefit analysis usually looking at energy density and wasted space in a product a prismatic cell may be a better use. In Tesla s case not so much for a simple reason you may have overlooked: The wasted space between cells in a Tesla pack is used for the active cooling system. Cheers! | To keep the cells from degrading you need a lot of internal pressure. Square cells would just bow out. If you ve ever seen a bad battery in a cell phone or laptop balloon out on the sides i think it s the same thing. | 121 | 2 | 830 |
5nagpw | 66 | Saw my third Tesla Model 3 on the road yeasterday Model 3s sighted in the wild ... at least in the LA area. - The first was on Pico a week or 2 ago near the showroom so it may have been on a test drive. Brief glimpse red car. Recognized the front end. - The second was last Friday while I was stopped on Sunset. Dark blue Model 3 in the left turn lane. Very pretty front side and rear views. - About 6 A.M. yesterday morning while it was still dark I noticed a Model 3 passing me on the Glendale Freeway. Saw the landscape center console monitor and also that it had a cluster of conventional-looking driving instruments over the steering wheel. No head-up display that I could see. I don t know if people are interested in these sightings on the streets. I ll try to get pictures next time. | Pics or it didn t happen | I don t believe these without pics!! I was in Freemont area and didn t see one 😔 | 42 | 13 | 831 |
5nr8s2 | 220 | Tesla s stock jump today and EPA standards Rather unexpectedly awoke to a good size stock jump for TSLA (currently over $5). Scratched my head a bit as to as why - the news about the seats losing ventilation didn t come across as terribly positive to me. Now Tesla is a fairly volatile stock so swings aren t unexpected but there s usually still a fairly viable driver behind them. Charging for Supercharging could certainly be a player but I felt there had to be more. Came across this: https: www.bloomberg.com news articles 2017-01-13 epa-defies-automakers-by-keeping-efficiency-standards-intact It turns out the EPA is leaving the stringent fuel economy requirements in place after all - and even the new administration would have a bear of a time getting them out of there given the structure of the agency. EVs got a little bump all across the board. Good to see. | I still fully expect the incoming administration working with a cooperative house and senate to eventually figure out how to tax and penalize EV PEV HV vehicles and use the revenues to subsidise those that roll coal . | I should note - TSLA will likely give a lot of this back through the day (as it s wont to do) however it likely sets a new floor and shows a good close to the week. | 57 | 2 | 832 |
5nu78s | 317 | Transcript of the Gigafactory Q& A - Great stuff on GF1 OK so I took some time to transcript one finger-at-a-time what I could from the Gigafactory Q& A really interesting discussion. Great content from Elon and JB as ever. https: soundcloud.com thehumanwire analyst-meeting-at-gigafactory-mp-cleaned Intro: Any questions related to the company we are happy to take them but this is the Gigafactory battery pack and we want to kind of skew the questions in that direction. Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory over a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see if 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well I think the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really exciting in the same way we design the car in designing the model S X the model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like a type of Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So there is no value to us differentiating them [..] but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I had this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the [..] calculations it was like oww [..] top down [..] Gigafactory [..] kind of like the rocket equation [……] there are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25secs which sounds like a lot but that s 5meters and its only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1m per second so the fastest car factory in the world is 5x slower than a person walking so I think these a lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of an automotive plant is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get upto about 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and its giant now that output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - Now I think it s obvious from the answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the recent acquisition of ??? engineering now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory based automation now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic it s not outsourced to some other company and its really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] – We re really going to be quite vertically integrated now were going to take this to a level that s far beyond river rouge ideally I d like to pop this factory over a mine and out comes a car. in the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design by the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught it shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global force majeure. […] Hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed at any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global force majeure its crazy. And we literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything it s tough to imagine everything. We had frunk carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeh exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that could dock because of port closures due to smog you know [..] electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand [..] your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we dissed earlier it s many it s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that not standard its not out of a catalogue its something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of knowhow and a lot of hard work what that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost so that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex building and a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some original processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are doing things [..] that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - I m going to remark on a number of cases where its digging a ditch filling it in and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example we use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the pulp is lithium carbonate so what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide [..] and don t convert it into one thing and back again But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - And it s interesting to mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. […… …. … ] recycled flows and process chemicals and were investing allot of time in innovating those steps. So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world and it s a big factory. Q3) [… Indistinguishable voice question …] Elon: [13:21] - I say I don t think about competitors that much I think you should focus on being as good as we possibly can and try to approach the limit of physics. Then for anyone who s not trying to approach the limits of physics is going to lose. And so that s what we try to do here. So you take a physics based approach to manufacturing efficiencies and I think that s fundamentally going to be what is out long term competitive advantage that people just don t realise. I like telling people that this will [….] In the short term our advantage is going to be autonomy short term meaning like the next 2 – 3 years and the long term advantage like say over 10 years Tesla will be the best manufacturer on earth that s our aspiration. I don t know anyone who is actually even attempting to do that maybe there is somebody but I don t know who that will be. Q4) Brain from JP Morgan. You have said before that the Gigafactory is critical to the launch or the model 3 I think here today we can pretty much see that the Gigafactory is pretty much on track. Maybe you can let us know what is going on in Freemont what is the update there any update you can give us on timing for the model 3 launch. Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production motor production drivetrain power electronics that all seems pretty good. I d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there it s actually the fairly basic stuff it s the stamping dyes the stamping dyes for the A class body panels and for the seats. That s the knowledge that I have I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and shela? needs to come-in on time on the stamping press so shela? is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in J1[?] so if shela? meets their timeline on the stamping press in then I feel pretty good about the schedule. JB: [16:20] There is a huge amount of work happening in Freemont It s just less obvious than perhaps than here because its reconfiguring things inside the factory. So moving things out of the way spaces getting ready and prepared so that work is all underway and generally tracking on-course. You just don t see it it s not as obvious from the outside as here. Elon: [16:40] The final assembly for the model 3 will be far more advanced than for the model S and X. […] It will be a step change [..] for the S and X. And its [..] in a way that we think we can increase the velocity of the line. That s like the best way to improve if you just speed things up you don t need extra capex you just turn a knob and go faster. Q) …. Why did River Rouge fail and why will this be different. Elon: [18:00] I don t want to say the reason for failure because it will get me in trouble. Q) Bob – DB – You recently had a meeting with president Elect Trump and it turns out there obviously a lot going on there is a change in the political environment and it could affect our expectation of the auto industry it could affect the solar and storage industry…. Elon: [19:00] – I think the president elect definitely has a strong emphasis on US manufacturing we are building he biggest factory in the world here so I think that s something he is very supportive of and jobs in the US very supportive of that on the climate issues it s a little bit more muddled I would say a little mixed. But I think we may see some surprising things from the next administration. I don t think this administration will take a lot of negative action against fossil fuels but it s possible they may take positive action on renewables. Possible. Q) [.. unheard ..] Elon: [20:00] – The federal tax credit the $7500 thing which is going to winding down anyway […] make half a million cars a year that tax credit runs out at a few hundred thousand cars. So it s not something all of the tax incentives either don t scale or they […] disadvantage Tesla. Which is not I mentioned this once before at a [..] but if you take the zero emission vehicle credit […] 14 states we get 50c on the dollar for those but GM can get 100c on the dollar by [..] to the existing program we sell them wholesale and they sell them retail. [… no so interesting …] Q) 22:00 – Right behind these walls the model 3 drive train is being developed. Why here.. [… something about model 3 range..] Elon: [22:50] - Q) [… Not heard ..] 18650 battery choice? Elon: [24:20] [..] Well with respect to battery packs [..] what do we think on a fundamental basis has the lowest cost per kwh and the best energy density and a lot of other factors like [..] cool it so it can be effective in hot and cold climates how long it s going to last its resilience in a crash. [.. long gap in audio..] JB: [28:08] […] Maybe just to summarise I don t think at these volumes you know standards across the batteries matter much. You know maybe if you […] low volume especially hundreds of thousands of units a year it s really not much point. It s probably negative to standardise because it means you re not really custom engineering for the solution that you want to build. And in terms of form factor as Elon said with this we are approaching it from a 1st principals point of view and we have done the analysis pretty deeply we did this 10 years ago and continue to do this every couple of months even […] and right now we see that as the lowest cost and the highest cost performance type and size of cell. There are a lot of aspects to consider here you know […] its safety […] all these different contributors and I think a lot of the […] car companies are trying to focus too much on getting a very large cell because it simplifies their module manufacture and you know we re building modules here in this factory next to the cell line you know there is no differentiation it goes straight from cell assembly into module assembly. But if you have different factories doing modules vs cells and you think [..] as a unit you have to worry about […] bigger cells. Elon: [29:25] Yeah Exactly you know the bigger the cell is the worse their yield is so if you unwrap all the cells that are sitting [….] make one big cell in the battery pack your yield would be terrible. Because the odds of their being at least one tiny defect across that whole thing are very high. So if you can divide the cells up then you can actually have a much better yield with smaller cells than you can with bigger cells. Its almost like silicon you can [..] silicon wafer […] very difficult to ensure that a big silicon wafer is defect free and that s why they don t make humongous silicon wafers. [… too much noise to hear he last question or answer.. …] | Fantastic work kiwi! Took a shot at trying to find missing words etc. Edits in **bold** Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory **on roughly** a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see ~~if~~ 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well **one way to think of** the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue**s** there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really **designing it** in the same way we design the car. In designing the Model S X the Model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like **some** Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated. Now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So **if** there is no value to us differentiating them **then we don t do it ** but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I **came to** this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the **envelope** calculations **for** like ** well how fast does a factory go? How fast could the Gigafactory be? Essentially finding that** the rocket equation [……] **manufacturing.** There are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and **then** what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25 seconds which sounds like a lot but that s 5 meters and **it s** only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1 meter per second so the fastest car **lines** in the world is 5 times slower than a person walking. So **clearly there s a** lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of ~~an~~ automotive plant**s** is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get **up to around** 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and **it s** giant. **So the** output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can **just** crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - **Maybe this was** obvious from **that** answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the [recent acquisition of **Grohmann Engineering**](http: electrek.co 2016 11 08 tesla-acquires-german-engineering-firm-create-tesla-advanced-automation-germany ) now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory **production** automation. Now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the **cell** assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic. It s not outsourced to some other company. **So it s** really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] **You** really **have** to be quite vertically integrated. Now we re going to take this to a level that s **I think** beyond [River Rouge](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Ford_River_Rouge_Complex). Ideally I d like to **park** this factory over a mine and out comes a car. In the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with Model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design. By the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught. It shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global [*force majeure*.](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Force_majeure) **So ok there s going to be a** hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed. At any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global *force majeure* its crazy. And **we ve** literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything **you can possibly** imagine everything. We had **trunk** carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. **It s like we just want our trunk carpet but it got impounded. There s like no cocaine it s just trunk carpet. Seriously just give us... please can we have the trunk carpet. We ll take it even if it s got bullet holes. [laughter]** JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeah exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that **couldn t** dock because of port closures due to smog. **We re trying to deliver** electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand **and simplify** your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we **discussed** earlier **there s** many. It s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that [is] not standard it s not out of a catalogue. It s something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of know-how and a lot of hard work. What that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost. So that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex **in** building. And a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some **wasteful** processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are **working on** things **that are quite unique there ** that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - **There are a remarkable** number of cases where **it s** like somebody s digging a ditch filling a ditch and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example. We use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the **default** is lithium carbonate. So what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide **right off the bat** and don t convert it into one thing and **then** back [into the original?]. But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - **Maybe I should just** mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. **There are very dry conditions there are clean conditions so [drying clean rooms with?]** recycled flows and process chemicals and **we re** investing **a lot** of time in innovating those steps. [editor s note: see the transcript [here](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 57v7xx tesla_and_panasonic_to_collaborate_on d8vepvg ) for more details] So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world **that s our rough estimate.** And it s a big factory. | Thanks! | 41 | 3 | 833 |
5nu78s | 317 | Transcript of the Gigafactory Q& A - Great stuff on GF1 OK so I took some time to transcript one finger-at-a-time what I could from the Gigafactory Q& A really interesting discussion. Great content from Elon and JB as ever. https: soundcloud.com thehumanwire analyst-meeting-at-gigafactory-mp-cleaned Intro: Any questions related to the company we are happy to take them but this is the Gigafactory battery pack and we want to kind of skew the questions in that direction. Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory over a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see if 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well I think the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really exciting in the same way we design the car in designing the model S X the model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like a type of Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So there is no value to us differentiating them [..] but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I had this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the [..] calculations it was like oww [..] top down [..] Gigafactory [..] kind of like the rocket equation [……] there are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25secs which sounds like a lot but that s 5meters and its only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1m per second so the fastest car factory in the world is 5x slower than a person walking so I think these a lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of an automotive plant is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get upto about 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and its giant now that output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - Now I think it s obvious from the answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the recent acquisition of ??? engineering now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory based automation now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic it s not outsourced to some other company and its really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] – We re really going to be quite vertically integrated now were going to take this to a level that s far beyond river rouge ideally I d like to pop this factory over a mine and out comes a car. in the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design by the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught it shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global force majeure. […] Hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed at any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global force majeure its crazy. And we literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything it s tough to imagine everything. We had frunk carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeh exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that could dock because of port closures due to smog you know [..] electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand [..] your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we dissed earlier it s many it s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that not standard its not out of a catalogue its something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of knowhow and a lot of hard work what that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost so that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex building and a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some original processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are doing things [..] that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - I m going to remark on a number of cases where its digging a ditch filling it in and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example we use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the pulp is lithium carbonate so what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide [..] and don t convert it into one thing and back again But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - And it s interesting to mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. […… …. … ] recycled flows and process chemicals and were investing allot of time in innovating those steps. So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world and it s a big factory. Q3) [… Indistinguishable voice question …] Elon: [13:21] - I say I don t think about competitors that much I think you should focus on being as good as we possibly can and try to approach the limit of physics. Then for anyone who s not trying to approach the limits of physics is going to lose. And so that s what we try to do here. So you take a physics based approach to manufacturing efficiencies and I think that s fundamentally going to be what is out long term competitive advantage that people just don t realise. I like telling people that this will [….] In the short term our advantage is going to be autonomy short term meaning like the next 2 – 3 years and the long term advantage like say over 10 years Tesla will be the best manufacturer on earth that s our aspiration. I don t know anyone who is actually even attempting to do that maybe there is somebody but I don t know who that will be. Q4) Brain from JP Morgan. You have said before that the Gigafactory is critical to the launch or the model 3 I think here today we can pretty much see that the Gigafactory is pretty much on track. Maybe you can let us know what is going on in Freemont what is the update there any update you can give us on timing for the model 3 launch. Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production motor production drivetrain power electronics that all seems pretty good. I d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there it s actually the fairly basic stuff it s the stamping dyes the stamping dyes for the A class body panels and for the seats. That s the knowledge that I have I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and shela? needs to come-in on time on the stamping press so shela? is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in J1[?] so if shela? meets their timeline on the stamping press in then I feel pretty good about the schedule. JB: [16:20] There is a huge amount of work happening in Freemont It s just less obvious than perhaps than here because its reconfiguring things inside the factory. So moving things out of the way spaces getting ready and prepared so that work is all underway and generally tracking on-course. You just don t see it it s not as obvious from the outside as here. Elon: [16:40] The final assembly for the model 3 will be far more advanced than for the model S and X. […] It will be a step change [..] for the S and X. And its [..] in a way that we think we can increase the velocity of the line. That s like the best way to improve if you just speed things up you don t need extra capex you just turn a knob and go faster. Q) …. Why did River Rouge fail and why will this be different. Elon: [18:00] I don t want to say the reason for failure because it will get me in trouble. Q) Bob – DB – You recently had a meeting with president Elect Trump and it turns out there obviously a lot going on there is a change in the political environment and it could affect our expectation of the auto industry it could affect the solar and storage industry…. Elon: [19:00] – I think the president elect definitely has a strong emphasis on US manufacturing we are building he biggest factory in the world here so I think that s something he is very supportive of and jobs in the US very supportive of that on the climate issues it s a little bit more muddled I would say a little mixed. But I think we may see some surprising things from the next administration. I don t think this administration will take a lot of negative action against fossil fuels but it s possible they may take positive action on renewables. Possible. Q) [.. unheard ..] Elon: [20:00] – The federal tax credit the $7500 thing which is going to winding down anyway […] make half a million cars a year that tax credit runs out at a few hundred thousand cars. So it s not something all of the tax incentives either don t scale or they […] disadvantage Tesla. Which is not I mentioned this once before at a [..] but if you take the zero emission vehicle credit […] 14 states we get 50c on the dollar for those but GM can get 100c on the dollar by [..] to the existing program we sell them wholesale and they sell them retail. [… no so interesting …] Q) 22:00 – Right behind these walls the model 3 drive train is being developed. Why here.. [… something about model 3 range..] Elon: [22:50] - Q) [… Not heard ..] 18650 battery choice? Elon: [24:20] [..] Well with respect to battery packs [..] what do we think on a fundamental basis has the lowest cost per kwh and the best energy density and a lot of other factors like [..] cool it so it can be effective in hot and cold climates how long it s going to last its resilience in a crash. [.. long gap in audio..] JB: [28:08] […] Maybe just to summarise I don t think at these volumes you know standards across the batteries matter much. You know maybe if you […] low volume especially hundreds of thousands of units a year it s really not much point. It s probably negative to standardise because it means you re not really custom engineering for the solution that you want to build. And in terms of form factor as Elon said with this we are approaching it from a 1st principals point of view and we have done the analysis pretty deeply we did this 10 years ago and continue to do this every couple of months even […] and right now we see that as the lowest cost and the highest cost performance type and size of cell. There are a lot of aspects to consider here you know […] its safety […] all these different contributors and I think a lot of the […] car companies are trying to focus too much on getting a very large cell because it simplifies their module manufacture and you know we re building modules here in this factory next to the cell line you know there is no differentiation it goes straight from cell assembly into module assembly. But if you have different factories doing modules vs cells and you think [..] as a unit you have to worry about […] bigger cells. Elon: [29:25] Yeah Exactly you know the bigger the cell is the worse their yield is so if you unwrap all the cells that are sitting [….] make one big cell in the battery pack your yield would be terrible. Because the odds of their being at least one tiny defect across that whole thing are very high. So if you can divide the cells up then you can actually have a much better yield with smaller cells than you can with bigger cells. Its almost like silicon you can [..] silicon wafer […] very difficult to ensure that a big silicon wafer is defect free and that s why they don t make humongous silicon wafers. [… too much noise to hear he last question or answer.. …] | Fantastic work kiwi! Took a shot at trying to find missing words etc. Edits in **bold** Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory **on roughly** a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see ~~if~~ 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well **one way to think of** the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue**s** there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really **designing it** in the same way we design the car. In designing the Model S X the Model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like **some** Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated. Now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So **if** there is no value to us differentiating them **then we don t do it ** but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I **came to** this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the **envelope** calculations **for** like ** well how fast does a factory go? How fast could the Gigafactory be? Essentially finding that** the rocket equation [……] **manufacturing.** There are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and **then** what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25 seconds which sounds like a lot but that s 5 meters and **it s** only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1 meter per second so the fastest car **lines** in the world is 5 times slower than a person walking. So **clearly there s a** lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of ~~an~~ automotive plant**s** is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get **up to around** 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and **it s** giant. **So the** output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can **just** crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - **Maybe this was** obvious from **that** answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the [recent acquisition of **Grohmann Engineering**](http: electrek.co 2016 11 08 tesla-acquires-german-engineering-firm-create-tesla-advanced-automation-germany ) now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory **production** automation. Now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the **cell** assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic. It s not outsourced to some other company. **So it s** really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] **You** really **have** to be quite vertically integrated. Now we re going to take this to a level that s **I think** beyond [River Rouge](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Ford_River_Rouge_Complex). Ideally I d like to **park** this factory over a mine and out comes a car. In the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with Model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design. By the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught. It shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global [*force majeure*.](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Force_majeure) **So ok there s going to be a** hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed. At any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global *force majeure* its crazy. And **we ve** literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything **you can possibly** imagine everything. We had **trunk** carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. **It s like we just want our trunk carpet but it got impounded. There s like no cocaine it s just trunk carpet. Seriously just give us... please can we have the trunk carpet. We ll take it even if it s got bullet holes. [laughter]** JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeah exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that **couldn t** dock because of port closures due to smog. **We re trying to deliver** electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand **and simplify** your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we **discussed** earlier **there s** many. It s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that [is] not standard it s not out of a catalogue. It s something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of know-how and a lot of hard work. What that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost. So that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex **in** building. And a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some **wasteful** processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are **working on** things **that are quite unique there ** that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - **There are a remarkable** number of cases where **it s** like somebody s digging a ditch filling a ditch and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example. We use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the **default** is lithium carbonate. So what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide **right off the bat** and don t convert it into one thing and **then** back [into the original?]. But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - **Maybe I should just** mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. **There are very dry conditions there are clean conditions so [drying clean rooms with?]** recycled flows and process chemicals and **we re** investing **a lot** of time in innovating those steps. [editor s note: see the transcript [here](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 57v7xx tesla_and_panasonic_to_collaborate_on d8vepvg ) for more details] So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world **that s our rough estimate.** And it s a big factory. | Wow. Just wow. I wonder if people really appreciate what Musk is saying here. 2-3 meters per second would mean annual production rate of 15 million cars per year. From one factory. And Tesla is going to build MORE factories. | 41 | 5 | 834 |
5nu78s | 317 | Transcript of the Gigafactory Q& A - Great stuff on GF1 OK so I took some time to transcript one finger-at-a-time what I could from the Gigafactory Q& A really interesting discussion. Great content from Elon and JB as ever. https: soundcloud.com thehumanwire analyst-meeting-at-gigafactory-mp-cleaned Intro: Any questions related to the company we are happy to take them but this is the Gigafactory battery pack and we want to kind of skew the questions in that direction. Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory over a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see if 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well I think the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really exciting in the same way we design the car in designing the model S X the model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like a type of Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So there is no value to us differentiating them [..] but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I had this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the [..] calculations it was like oww [..] top down [..] Gigafactory [..] kind of like the rocket equation [……] there are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25secs which sounds like a lot but that s 5meters and its only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1m per second so the fastest car factory in the world is 5x slower than a person walking so I think these a lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of an automotive plant is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get upto about 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and its giant now that output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - Now I think it s obvious from the answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the recent acquisition of ??? engineering now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory based automation now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic it s not outsourced to some other company and its really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] – We re really going to be quite vertically integrated now were going to take this to a level that s far beyond river rouge ideally I d like to pop this factory over a mine and out comes a car. in the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design by the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught it shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global force majeure. […] Hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed at any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global force majeure its crazy. And we literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything it s tough to imagine everything. We had frunk carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeh exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that could dock because of port closures due to smog you know [..] electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand [..] your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we dissed earlier it s many it s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that not standard its not out of a catalogue its something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of knowhow and a lot of hard work what that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost so that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex building and a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some original processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are doing things [..] that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - I m going to remark on a number of cases where its digging a ditch filling it in and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example we use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the pulp is lithium carbonate so what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide [..] and don t convert it into one thing and back again But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - And it s interesting to mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. […… …. … ] recycled flows and process chemicals and were investing allot of time in innovating those steps. So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world and it s a big factory. Q3) [… Indistinguishable voice question …] Elon: [13:21] - I say I don t think about competitors that much I think you should focus on being as good as we possibly can and try to approach the limit of physics. Then for anyone who s not trying to approach the limits of physics is going to lose. And so that s what we try to do here. So you take a physics based approach to manufacturing efficiencies and I think that s fundamentally going to be what is out long term competitive advantage that people just don t realise. I like telling people that this will [….] In the short term our advantage is going to be autonomy short term meaning like the next 2 – 3 years and the long term advantage like say over 10 years Tesla will be the best manufacturer on earth that s our aspiration. I don t know anyone who is actually even attempting to do that maybe there is somebody but I don t know who that will be. Q4) Brain from JP Morgan. You have said before that the Gigafactory is critical to the launch or the model 3 I think here today we can pretty much see that the Gigafactory is pretty much on track. Maybe you can let us know what is going on in Freemont what is the update there any update you can give us on timing for the model 3 launch. Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production motor production drivetrain power electronics that all seems pretty good. I d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there it s actually the fairly basic stuff it s the stamping dyes the stamping dyes for the A class body panels and for the seats. That s the knowledge that I have I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and shela? needs to come-in on time on the stamping press so shela? is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in J1[?] so if shela? meets their timeline on the stamping press in then I feel pretty good about the schedule. JB: [16:20] There is a huge amount of work happening in Freemont It s just less obvious than perhaps than here because its reconfiguring things inside the factory. So moving things out of the way spaces getting ready and prepared so that work is all underway and generally tracking on-course. You just don t see it it s not as obvious from the outside as here. Elon: [16:40] The final assembly for the model 3 will be far more advanced than for the model S and X. […] It will be a step change [..] for the S and X. And its [..] in a way that we think we can increase the velocity of the line. That s like the best way to improve if you just speed things up you don t need extra capex you just turn a knob and go faster. Q) …. Why did River Rouge fail and why will this be different. Elon: [18:00] I don t want to say the reason for failure because it will get me in trouble. Q) Bob – DB – You recently had a meeting with president Elect Trump and it turns out there obviously a lot going on there is a change in the political environment and it could affect our expectation of the auto industry it could affect the solar and storage industry…. Elon: [19:00] – I think the president elect definitely has a strong emphasis on US manufacturing we are building he biggest factory in the world here so I think that s something he is very supportive of and jobs in the US very supportive of that on the climate issues it s a little bit more muddled I would say a little mixed. But I think we may see some surprising things from the next administration. I don t think this administration will take a lot of negative action against fossil fuels but it s possible they may take positive action on renewables. Possible. Q) [.. unheard ..] Elon: [20:00] – The federal tax credit the $7500 thing which is going to winding down anyway […] make half a million cars a year that tax credit runs out at a few hundred thousand cars. So it s not something all of the tax incentives either don t scale or they […] disadvantage Tesla. Which is not I mentioned this once before at a [..] but if you take the zero emission vehicle credit […] 14 states we get 50c on the dollar for those but GM can get 100c on the dollar by [..] to the existing program we sell them wholesale and they sell them retail. [… no so interesting …] Q) 22:00 – Right behind these walls the model 3 drive train is being developed. Why here.. [… something about model 3 range..] Elon: [22:50] - Q) [… Not heard ..] 18650 battery choice? Elon: [24:20] [..] Well with respect to battery packs [..] what do we think on a fundamental basis has the lowest cost per kwh and the best energy density and a lot of other factors like [..] cool it so it can be effective in hot and cold climates how long it s going to last its resilience in a crash. [.. long gap in audio..] JB: [28:08] […] Maybe just to summarise I don t think at these volumes you know standards across the batteries matter much. You know maybe if you […] low volume especially hundreds of thousands of units a year it s really not much point. It s probably negative to standardise because it means you re not really custom engineering for the solution that you want to build. And in terms of form factor as Elon said with this we are approaching it from a 1st principals point of view and we have done the analysis pretty deeply we did this 10 years ago and continue to do this every couple of months even […] and right now we see that as the lowest cost and the highest cost performance type and size of cell. There are a lot of aspects to consider here you know […] its safety […] all these different contributors and I think a lot of the […] car companies are trying to focus too much on getting a very large cell because it simplifies their module manufacture and you know we re building modules here in this factory next to the cell line you know there is no differentiation it goes straight from cell assembly into module assembly. But if you have different factories doing modules vs cells and you think [..] as a unit you have to worry about […] bigger cells. Elon: [29:25] Yeah Exactly you know the bigger the cell is the worse their yield is so if you unwrap all the cells that are sitting [….] make one big cell in the battery pack your yield would be terrible. Because the odds of their being at least one tiny defect across that whole thing are very high. So if you can divide the cells up then you can actually have a much better yield with smaller cells than you can with bigger cells. Its almost like silicon you can [..] silicon wafer […] very difficult to ensure that a big silicon wafer is defect free and that s why they don t make humongous silicon wafers. [… too much noise to hear he last question or answer.. …] | Fantastic work kiwi! Took a shot at trying to find missing words etc. Edits in **bold** Q1) [1:00] – Thanks You discussed a constantly improving factory **on roughly** a two year time frame what do you see as the capital intensity of those improvements and do you see ~~if~~ 3rd party automation robotic companies offering solutions that you find acceptable or is that something that Tesla is also working on. Elon: [1:20] - Well **one way to think of** the value of a company is the degree to which it has differentiated automation. So you think of like an example of popcorn if you make popcorn manually you are going to get thrashed by someone who has a popcorn machine and then you ll get thrashed by someone who has an even better popcorn machine. So differentiated automation I think is fundamental to sustaining a competitive advantage over time. The way that it is typically done in the auto industry is catalogue engineering. So you go to standard equipment suppliers you look at the things that are on the catalogue you pick one of those machines and you put the factory together that way. If you take that path you are going to forgo [..] a competitive advantage [..] from a manufacturing standpoint because if everybody just picks the same set of things from the same catalogue**s** there is no long term advantage. So I think it s incredibly important to invest in the machine that makes the machine and to think about it as a tightly integrated system. Really **designing it** in the same way we design the car. In designing the Model S X the Model 3 we didn t go and look at parts from all other cars and stick together something that would look like **some** Frankenstein car it would really not be differentiated. Now there are a few parts in the car not many less than 5% that are in other vehicles. So **if** there is no value to us differentiating them **then we don t do it ** but I think it is really quite fundamental to focus on differentiated automation. I **came to** this realization early last year when I was sleeping in the factory trying to fix manufacturing issues it was like hell […] but I just I did some back of the **envelope** calculations **for** like ** well how fast does a factory go? How fast could the Gigafactory be? Essentially finding that** the rocket equation [……] **manufacturing.** There are two parts to the rocket equation exhaust velocity and the proportion of the rocket that is propellant vs not propellant. So you take that approach to a factory and say what percentage of the volume of the factory is active vs inert that gives you a volumetric efficiency and **then** what is the exit velocity of product from that factory. And something that is considered to be a very good car factory is one that produces a car every 25 seconds which sounds like a lot but that s 5 meters and **it s** only .2 meters per second. A stroll a casual walk is 1 meter per second so the fastest car **lines** in the world is 5 times slower than a person walking. So **clearly there s a** lot of room for improvement there. I think ultimately we should be able to get in well excess of 1 meter per second at least 2-3 meters per second exit velocity from the factory. And then the volumetric efficiency of ~~an~~ automotive plant**s** is usually in low single digits in fact I would say for our Freemont plant it s probably maybe 1-2% which is crazy low. There might be some good plants out there that get **up to around** 5-6% maybe 10% at tops. Now the Gigafactory will be more like 30% 30-40% and **it s** giant. **So the** output of this thing is going to be insane. It also makes sense why velocity is such an important thing if two companies are competing and one factory can **just** crank-up the speed of the factory by a factor of 5 and the other company has to build 5 factories this is not a competition. JB: [6:07] - **Maybe this was** obvious from **that** answer but we definitely are investing in that capability ourselves. We work with a few outside automation companies but the majority of the core automation at Tesla is designed and implemented ourselves now you have seen the [recent acquisition of **Grohmann Engineering**](http: electrek.co 2016 11 08 tesla-acquires-german-engineering-firm-create-tesla-advanced-automation-germany ) now that s a key example of us […] really going deep in automation especially factory **production** automation. Now Panasonic does some of these same things you know they build most of their own equipment so the things you saw on the **cell** assembly like were in many cases designed by Panasonic. It s not outsourced to some other company. **So it s** really creating true value there. Elon: [6:45] **You** really **have** to be quite vertically integrated. Now we re going to take this to a level that s **I think** beyond [River Rouge](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Ford_River_Rouge_Complex). Ideally I d like to **park** this factory over a mine and out comes a car. In the limit that s the ideal situation. Right now let s say with Model 3 we have version 0.5 of what we call the alien dreadnaught design. By the time it s really working well it should look like an alien dreadnaught. It shouldn t look like a normal factory. But even with 0.5 we ve got this global supply chain still where things coming from all over the world and this is actually terrible for efficiency and for reliability of the supply chain. If you go to a global supply chain you are essentially inheriting global [*force majeure*.](https: en.wikipedia.org wiki Force_majeure) **So ok there s going to be a** hurricane earthquake fires floods somewhere in the world guaranteed. At any point in time there will be these things. If you have a global supply chain that means you have to take into account global *force majeure* its crazy. And **we ve** literally have had everything from ships sinking to factories burning down anything **you can possibly** imagine everything. We had **trunk** carpet that got caught in a shoot-out between drug gangs at the Mexican border. **It s like we just want our trunk carpet but it got impounded. There s like no cocaine it s just trunk carpet. Seriously just give us... please can we have the trunk carpet. We ll take it even if it s got bullet holes. [laughter]** JB: [8:42] - Pollution closures in China Elon: [8:45] - Yeah exactly. It s really ironic we had 2000 cars on ships waiting to dock in China at the end of last year that **couldn t** dock because of port closures due to smog. **We re trying to deliver** electric cars. [laughter] Q2) [9:15] - Jeff […] research. I want to understand **and simplify** your key competitive advantages strengths. [Lots more waffle] JB: [9:55] - Well you know as we **discussed** earlier **there s** many. It s not a single silver bullet that makes that possible. I would say the top two things is really around the technology that is in the factory and in the process itself and that [is] not standard it s not out of a catalogue. It s something that we are engineering ourselves and we are improving ourselves with a lot of know-how and a lot of hard work. What that really means is we get higher throughput so we get higher yields we get lower capex per unit output which does translate into end cost because you are depreciating and amortizing the cost. So that s a key advantage. We can fit more into a smaller building so that s again lower capex in construction and lower capex **in** building. And a lot of that technology is also integrating multiple steps of the supply chain. So we re able to find ways to cut-out some **wasteful** processes that really weren t needed when the product was not taking a very direct path from its predecessors into its finished goods. So we are **working on** things **that are quite unique there ** that no one else is doing and again that translates into lower cost. Elon: [11:00] - **There are a remarkable** number of cases where **it s** like somebody s digging a ditch filling a ditch and then digging a ditch again. So take lithium hydroxide as an example. We use lithium hydroxide in our cells but most of the lithium out there is the **default** is lithium carbonate. So what they will do is they will mine lithium hydroxide turn it into lithium carbonate then turn it back into lithium hydroxide for us. Like ok that s pretty silly. Just give us high-grade lithium hydroxide **right off the bat** and don t convert it into one thing and **then** back [into the original?]. But that s what was happening actually for quite a while. JB: [11:40] - **Maybe I should just** mention also that some of that technology extends into the infrastructure. It may not seem like a really critical thing but manufacturing cells is very infrastructure intensive. **There are very dry conditions there are clean conditions so [drying clean rooms with?]** recycled flows and process chemicals and **we re** investing **a lot** of time in innovating those steps. [editor s note: see the transcript [here](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 57v7xx tesla_and_panasonic_to_collaborate_on d8vepvg ) for more details] So we are actually inventing and building better ways to make the infrastructure run more efficiently. Infrastructure cost is a reasonably large percentage of cell cost so we can attack that and we have strategic advantages on the final product cost. Elon: [12:27] - I mean our rough estimate is that our output per unit volume at the Gigafactory is three times better than the next best factory in the world **that s our rough estimate.** And it s a big factory. | So good. Thank you op. Btw for your question marks I wonder if they were talking about the Schuler press? http: www.getfilings.com sec-filings 110803 TESLA-MOTORS-INC_8-K g216412g46z79.jpg | 41 | 7 | 835 |
5nxndp | 29 | Bought 60D - Received 75D For unknown reasons I got a 75D and not the 60D I paid for when I picked up the new car. I am not planning on paying extra for the 75D. Is it easy for Tesla to downgrade me to 60D on the first service? Does the downgrade damage my car? | Enjoy the free ride. Don t say anything :) | Down or upgrading between the 60 and 75 is an easy software change and does not require any physical intervention in the car. No damage risk. | 68 | 8 | 836 |
5nxndp | 29 | Bought 60D - Received 75D For unknown reasons I got a 75D and not the 60D I paid for when I picked up the new car. I am not planning on paying extra for the 75D. Is it easy for Tesla to downgrade me to 60D on the first service? Does the downgrade damage my car? | Enjoy the free ride. Don t say anything :) | All 60Ds come with a 75D battery. The extra range is unlockable via the software. Are you sure that it s unlocked and available to use? | 68 | 18 | 837 |
5nxndp | 29 | Bought 60D - Received 75D For unknown reasons I got a 75D and not the 60D I paid for when I picked up the new car. I am not planning on paying extra for the 75D. Is it easy for Tesla to downgrade me to 60D on the first service? Does the downgrade damage my car? | Did the VIN match from when it was being produced and did all the documentation say 60D? | It should be easy for Tesla to downgrade even remotely. In your place I would tell them about it : once they get back to you you will get peace of mind which is probably more valuable than a free 75D upgrade. Otherwise you risk being downgraded without warning and worrying about that for as long as you own use the car. I wouldn t bet against them officially offering you the 75D upgrade (or offering you a discount if you want to keep it) they don t like to disappoint their customers. Nothing guaranteed though. | 50 | 6 | 838 |
5nymhx | 67 | If the model 3 is going to ship with a hud (as rumored) shouldn t we expect to see it in the S and X within the next few months? I know Elon said the S will always have the tech first and it will trickle down into the 3 afterward. | Yes I predict after Jan 15th. Maybe Jan 22nd. Nice way to distract from inauguration. Retail therapy. | The all glass roof finally showed up in the S. So it seems that will be their plan as a manufacture for future car updates. S X will be the first to get anything new and interesting. With the 15th coming up and free supercharger access going away i would think they have something up their sleeve. My guess is the 3 will not come with hud standard. You have floaty screen with everything on it already. Hud is redundant as a standard feature. If theyre going to project everything on the glass why have the touchscreen at all. Check out the video for self driving cars in dubai. It shows a teslaish car where every window was a touch screen. If youre in the back seat riding you cant change music or drop off location from back there. My guess is tesla glass is to replace the touchscreen completely in the future. https: youtu.be Lb0UGIXub2U | 38 | 10 | 839 |
5o775m | 94 | Officially obsessed with Tesla now. Recommended Docs vids articles blogs sites books etc. TL DR version: recommendations for articles videos posts about Tesla especially anything Model 3 related that someone late to the Tesla party should check out. So after telling myself for months that my next car will be a Tesla I finally went ahead took the Model 3 reservation plunge on Dec 30 2016. My lucky favorite number has been #3 since as far back as I can remember. No real reason why I just like it. When I was finally at a point in my life that I could finance a car and afford something I actually want and not just the cheapest A to B vehicle I could get I bought financed a 2004 Mazda 3 and after 6 years with that I upgraded to a 2011 BMW Series 3 (328i) and for my lucky third #3 car it will be the amazing Tesla Model 3. A sign? Omen? I dunno but I am SO STOKED FOR THIS AMAZING UNICORN MACHINE. More so than anything else out there. There was literally no under-$50k car out there that excited or interested me. And now that the Model 3 is coming everything out there seems so antiquated and more of the same boring garbage. Tesla has ruined cars for me. At least cars that aren t a Tesla. Since I placed my reservation I ve been devouring everything Tesla I can find. Subscribed to 3 podcasts (RTL The Tesla Show and Talking Tesla) daily checks on Teslarati.com Tesla Motors forum tesla.com forum read the [Wait But Why](http: waitbutwhy.com 2015 06 how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html) article on Elon (amazing btw learned SO much about SO many things) and have pre-ordered the paperback version of Ashlee Vance s bio of Elon. I even started scanning the Tesla subreddit daily. I ve been on Reddit for awhile now but never spent much time on it. Now I pretty much use it just for r teslamotors. So I know I m a little late to the Tesla party. Been following Elon Tesla SpaceX news casually for a while now but it wasn t until the Model 3 and its attainable $35k price point that I really began looking at a Tesla EV as a real possibility. So to all you Tesla gurus fanboys owners and dreamers what other video documentary article website forum blog posts do you recommend I check out and whet my whistle with? The Wait But Why article is something I m so glad i found after someone mentioned it in passing in a recent forum post. Spent two days getting through the whole thing lol. Loved every second of it. My appetite for all things Tesla is voracious. Feed me Seymour! | [electrek.co](https: electrek.co ) | I like to watch the Model 3 Owners Club on YouTube. Ken and Trevor make some good content although I would like more I ll take what I can get. They cover tesla and mother Ev s but it s a good spot to get caught up on all news Model 3! | 35 | 3 | 840 |
5o775m | 94 | Officially obsessed with Tesla now. Recommended Docs vids articles blogs sites books etc. TL DR version: recommendations for articles videos posts about Tesla especially anything Model 3 related that someone late to the Tesla party should check out. So after telling myself for months that my next car will be a Tesla I finally went ahead took the Model 3 reservation plunge on Dec 30 2016. My lucky favorite number has been #3 since as far back as I can remember. No real reason why I just like it. When I was finally at a point in my life that I could finance a car and afford something I actually want and not just the cheapest A to B vehicle I could get I bought financed a 2004 Mazda 3 and after 6 years with that I upgraded to a 2011 BMW Series 3 (328i) and for my lucky third #3 car it will be the amazing Tesla Model 3. A sign? Omen? I dunno but I am SO STOKED FOR THIS AMAZING UNICORN MACHINE. More so than anything else out there. There was literally no under-$50k car out there that excited or interested me. And now that the Model 3 is coming everything out there seems so antiquated and more of the same boring garbage. Tesla has ruined cars for me. At least cars that aren t a Tesla. Since I placed my reservation I ve been devouring everything Tesla I can find. Subscribed to 3 podcasts (RTL The Tesla Show and Talking Tesla) daily checks on Teslarati.com Tesla Motors forum tesla.com forum read the [Wait But Why](http: waitbutwhy.com 2015 06 how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html) article on Elon (amazing btw learned SO much about SO many things) and have pre-ordered the paperback version of Ashlee Vance s bio of Elon. I even started scanning the Tesla subreddit daily. I ve been on Reddit for awhile now but never spent much time on it. Now I pretty much use it just for r teslamotors. So I know I m a little late to the Tesla party. Been following Elon Tesla SpaceX news casually for a while now but it wasn t until the Model 3 and its attainable $35k price point that I really began looking at a Tesla EV as a real possibility. So to all you Tesla gurus fanboys owners and dreamers what other video documentary article website forum blog posts do you recommend I check out and whet my whistle with? The Wait But Why article is something I m so glad i found after someone mentioned it in passing in a recent forum post. Spent two days getting through the whole thing lol. Loved every second of it. My appetite for all things Tesla is voracious. Feed me Seymour! | [electrek.co](https: electrek.co ) | The Tesla Show - A Tesla Podcast! I tried a few Tesla podcasts and this one was the only one I felt was worth my time. The two podcasters do a great job of balancing each other asking hard questions and digging into the details. Highly worth your time to compress learning about Tesla and all things Model 3. | 35 | 5 | 841 |
5p17pz | 35 | Dear Tesla owners what negative aspects of your vehicle surprised you? I m patiently waiting for my Model 3 and simply curious about what actual Tesla owners have experienced in owning their S or X. For instance is there some small part of the vehicle that can be irritating that reviews don t really highlight because ultimately it s not a HUGE deal. | For such a big car I often find the front seat area isn t that roomy. The low roof thick doors curving roofline at the edges and high door sills translate into a much snugger cabin that you d expect. It s because the car tapers so much near the top it becomes narrower and lower right at your head where you notice it the most. I find drive-up bank tellers to be very difficult because I can t reach the receptacle from inside the car without bumping my head on the tapering roof. Additionally the arm rests are just ergonomically off and aren t adjustable. When I m alone in the car my elbow is usually on the passenger s side of the center arm rest with my wrist and hand angled to my side. That s fine unless I have a passenger who d like to use the arm rest. Then I feel like we re trying to share an airline arm rest. And for my wife it doesn t come forward far enough for comfort. And whose idea was it to make the only cabin storage cubby (until the center console came out) empty itself when you accelerate? There s no way that wasn t obvious during testing. I love the car. I did a 365 mile road trip in it today but I m not blind to some ergonomic issues with the interior that mostly stem from them trying to lower the drag coefficient. | My knee touches the center console and typically just leans up against it during long trips. | 37 | 10 | 842 |
5p2htu | 295 | 100D has arrived 100D specs: MS 632km 335 miles MX 565km 295 miles Price is +3.000 USD (or local currency) to 90D Can t be retrofitted. Now in Design Studios https: www.tesla.com models design | $3000 to go from 90D to 100D? That s a great deal. | Showing up in the mobile site for me but not in the desktop site. | 37 | 3 | 843 |
5p2htu | 295 | 100D has arrived 100D specs: MS 632km 335 miles MX 565km 295 miles Price is +3.000 USD (or local currency) to 90D Can t be retrofitted. Now in Design Studios https: www.tesla.com models design | $3000 to go from 90D to 100D? That s a great deal. | Nice ! I wonder if they will (or already did) deliver 100kWh battery software limited to 90kWh. | 37 | 10 | 844 |
5p2htu | 295 | 100D has arrived 100D specs: MS 632km 335 miles MX 565km 295 miles Price is +3.000 USD (or local currency) to 90D Can t be retrofitted. Now in Design Studios https: www.tesla.com models design | Time to wake up FredTesla. https: electrek.co is late. | What does can t be retrofitted mean? Can any battery be retrofitted right now? | 29 | 2 | 845 |
5pk8zf | 77 | Interaction at BMW dealership I stopped with a friend to look at the display cars. I was driving my Model X. A salesman friend asked to see it. He asked me if I bought or leased. I replied that I leased. He said Good Tesla might go out of business and you don t want to be stuck with it. Do you think that BMW trains them to say that? I thought it was a stupid thing to say. I m so glad I don t have my BMW any more. | Doubt it s part of official training. It s probably the circle of people he s in (at work or in general) want to see the benefits of BMW over Tesla and they probably got that from some old article so that s what he repeats to customers that are cross-shopping Tesla (e.g. Model 3 reservation holders). | What was your reply to him? | 57 | 10 | 846 |
5pk8zf | 77 | Interaction at BMW dealership I stopped with a friend to look at the display cars. I was driving my Model X. A salesman friend asked to see it. He asked me if I bought or leased. I replied that I leased. He said Good Tesla might go out of business and you don t want to be stuck with it. Do you think that BMW trains them to say that? I thought it was a stupid thing to say. I m so glad I don t have my BMW any more. | BMW might go out of business and you don t want to be stuck with that. | What was your reply to him? | 36 | 10 | 847 |
5pkufd | 29 | How long do Teslas really last? So far I ve never driven a car for less than eight years. I also put quite a few miles on my cars but nothing crazy. I would say somewhere between 17 000 to 21 000 a year. Is there anyone here that has put a crazy amount of miles on their Tesla? Or anyone driving a Model S from the year they launched? | There are Teslas running with over 200k miles. Battery will lose some charge but it is negligible. Maybe 5-10% even after hundreds of thousands of miles. A new one comes with an 8 year unlimited mile warranty on battery and drive train. The real maintenance cost seems to be ancillary systems. The door handles are complicated making them fail more often and be expensive to fix. The touchscreen. It goes through tires pretty quickly if you get the 21 wheels. Aluminum body panels are a beast to fix expensive and few shops can do it. The Model 3 should alleviate MOST of these issues they are going for an easy-to-build car which makes it a less complicated car by design. If you couldn t afford to normally drive and pay to maintain a $100k car (BMW 7 Range Rover Porsche) then a Model S or Model X is not for you. | I know of some Teslas with 200k+ km driven and though I don t know all the details of their maintenance they appear still to be running just fine. | 49 | 4 | 848 |
5pkufd | 29 | How long do Teslas really last? So far I ve never driven a car for less than eight years. I also put quite a few miles on my cars but nothing crazy. I would say somewhere between 17 000 to 21 000 a year. Is there anyone here that has put a crazy amount of miles on their Tesla? Or anyone driving a Model S from the year they launched? | There are Teslas running with over 200k miles. Battery will lose some charge but it is negligible. Maybe 5-10% even after hundreds of thousands of miles. A new one comes with an 8 year unlimited mile warranty on battery and drive train. The real maintenance cost seems to be ancillary systems. The door handles are complicated making them fail more often and be expensive to fix. The touchscreen. It goes through tires pretty quickly if you get the 21 wheels. Aluminum body panels are a beast to fix expensive and few shops can do it. The Model 3 should alleviate MOST of these issues they are going for an easy-to-build car which makes it a less complicated car by design. If you couldn t afford to normally drive and pay to maintain a $100k car (BMW 7 Range Rover Porsche) then a Model S or Model X is not for you. | I haven t heard of any dying of natural causes yet so it s 5 years and counting. | 49 | 14 | 849 |
5po8zl | 65 | Got to try Autosteer this morning... Don t do it yet! See those lines that wobble back and forth on your screen? Yeah that s how Autosteer is going to drive too. I swear if a cop had been behind me I d have been pulled over for drunk driving. Hope the next update reduces the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. On the awesome side I had TACC enabled for most of my drive to work! Yay! | Drive for a couple of hours that wobble will subside. | Sorry for asking but what is TACC? | 38 | 4 | 850 |
5po8zl | 65 | Got to try Autosteer this morning... Don t do it yet! See those lines that wobble back and forth on your screen? Yeah that s how Autosteer is going to drive too. I swear if a cop had been behind me I d have been pulled over for drunk driving. Hope the next update reduces the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. On the awesome side I had TACC enabled for most of my drive to work! Yay! | Here s a video of my lanes... http: i.imgur.com YknTISU.gifv | Sorry for asking but what is TACC? | 32 | 4 | 851 |
5pxqc6 | 34 | stock still rises somebody please explain why Now I just noticed that the stock right now as I wright this post is at 253 48 dollars. Can somebody please explain to me why it just keeps growing right now I mean I really like that but I also want to understand why it does that. Is it because of the meetings with Trump their expansion in Taiwan or something else ? Edit: thanks for your helpful comments :D | Ok I ll bite. Tesla held a meeting with institutional investors to show them their progress on the biggest factory (by floor space) in the world. They showed them a convincing story about how Tesla can carry out a super ambitious plan that could make Tesla a trillion dollar company in the long term. Tesla got some upgrades out of it. One famous short attended and declared he wouldn t short again. Anyone who was afraid Faraday Future would come along and steal market share no longer has that fear. The fear that all the other OEMs are coming out with Tesla killers before the Model 3 comes out has subsided. Nissan had plenty of opportunity to do something. The most compelling is the very limited production Bolt. But most importantly the Model 3 timeline has not slipped. We are 6 months away from the deadline for all the production parts to hit the factory and we have no indication that anything at all is slipping. | There are so many factors involved and Tesla is a bit of an unusual story compared to your typical stock but all in all it boils down to psychology. | 32 | 2 | 852 |
5qljc3 | 77 | I decided to buy the extended service agreement for $4k after all. Here s why... I ve had pano roof leak (first month ownership) gap chrome fixed back left window controls fixed 2 door handles replaced a drive unit replaced and am now schedule for another visit to have my charger battery looked at (because was at empty supercharger the other night at 5% charge and it was only at 50-70kw. Called tesla and they said my car and the supercharger looked fine so recommended I get it checked out since I should have been charging at 90kw+). Yes it is expensive. Yes Tesla s own projection estimate only like $2k warranty work per car. Yes the $200 per visit is annoying. Yes the exclusions are annoying. Yes the battery and drive unit warranty cover the most expensive stuff. Yes it also increases costs to do every yearly maintenance. Buuuuuuut.... I need peace of mind. I can t risk a couple door handles failing and something else (like the screen) - which would be over $4k if that screen goes. Also I ve already done the yearly maintenance anyways - although I am a little pissed my 50k mile one is going to be $900 even though I had similar fluids replaced at 37.5k miles when my DU was replaced. I can stomach $400-$600 a year for the maintenance... but $900 is stupid. So I decided to get it. Tesla service does treat me like a king and they are great - but I can t risk out of warranty issues on this tech-filled car. Wish I could. Cheers | My Model S is only 3 weeks old it s brand new. While I was driving it 2 days ago this came up: https: imgur.com a HeVAr The driver s door is misaligned and then there s also the driver s side view mirror not folding out completely not resetting to the right position if auto-fold is on or driver profiles are switched. Gave the car to the service center Thursday at 7:30 am still isn t in the shop. They tell me it s not even a guarantee that it ll be in the shop even by Monday. The worst part is the loaner they gave me is from Enterprise. Oh well there s nothing I can do about it lol. | I think you ve lost your MOFO title. 😉 | 35 | 3 | 853 |
5qljc3 | 77 | I decided to buy the extended service agreement for $4k after all. Here s why... I ve had pano roof leak (first month ownership) gap chrome fixed back left window controls fixed 2 door handles replaced a drive unit replaced and am now schedule for another visit to have my charger battery looked at (because was at empty supercharger the other night at 5% charge and it was only at 50-70kw. Called tesla and they said my car and the supercharger looked fine so recommended I get it checked out since I should have been charging at 90kw+). Yes it is expensive. Yes Tesla s own projection estimate only like $2k warranty work per car. Yes the $200 per visit is annoying. Yes the exclusions are annoying. Yes the battery and drive unit warranty cover the most expensive stuff. Yes it also increases costs to do every yearly maintenance. Buuuuuuut.... I need peace of mind. I can t risk a couple door handles failing and something else (like the screen) - which would be over $4k if that screen goes. Also I ve already done the yearly maintenance anyways - although I am a little pissed my 50k mile one is going to be $900 even though I had similar fluids replaced at 37.5k miles when my DU was replaced. I can stomach $400-$600 a year for the maintenance... but $900 is stupid. So I decided to get it. Tesla service does treat me like a king and they are great - but I can t risk out of warranty issues on this tech-filled car. Wish I could. Cheers | My Model S is only 3 weeks old it s brand new. While I was driving it 2 days ago this came up: https: imgur.com a HeVAr The driver s door is misaligned and then there s also the driver s side view mirror not folding out completely not resetting to the right position if auto-fold is on or driver profiles are switched. Gave the car to the service center Thursday at 7:30 am still isn t in the shop. They tell me it s not even a guarantee that it ll be in the shop even by Monday. The worst part is the loaner they gave me is from Enterprise. Oh well there s nothing I can do about it lol. | My first question is what year is your S60? Yearly 10k interval maintenance on a comparably priced Mercedes E class can run you $700-$1700 each depending on which service you need. So $900 is expensive but not too expensive for a premium sedan. Either way I ve paid for an extended service plan on a motorcycle because of the exact fears you have and the fact that I value peace of mind more than the cash over the life of the extended period. In my case I extended the warranty from 2 years to 6 and the warranty transfers with the vehicle so if (when) I sell it the next person in line gets a little benefit. Anyway it s a cheap insurance policy right? Right. | 35 | 3 | 854 |
5qljc3 | 77 | I decided to buy the extended service agreement for $4k after all. Here s why... I ve had pano roof leak (first month ownership) gap chrome fixed back left window controls fixed 2 door handles replaced a drive unit replaced and am now schedule for another visit to have my charger battery looked at (because was at empty supercharger the other night at 5% charge and it was only at 50-70kw. Called tesla and they said my car and the supercharger looked fine so recommended I get it checked out since I should have been charging at 90kw+). Yes it is expensive. Yes Tesla s own projection estimate only like $2k warranty work per car. Yes the $200 per visit is annoying. Yes the exclusions are annoying. Yes the battery and drive unit warranty cover the most expensive stuff. Yes it also increases costs to do every yearly maintenance. Buuuuuuut.... I need peace of mind. I can t risk a couple door handles failing and something else (like the screen) - which would be over $4k if that screen goes. Also I ve already done the yearly maintenance anyways - although I am a little pissed my 50k mile one is going to be $900 even though I had similar fluids replaced at 37.5k miles when my DU was replaced. I can stomach $400-$600 a year for the maintenance... but $900 is stupid. So I decided to get it. Tesla service does treat me like a king and they are great - but I can t risk out of warranty issues on this tech-filled car. Wish I could. Cheers | My Model S is only 3 weeks old it s brand new. While I was driving it 2 days ago this came up: https: imgur.com a HeVAr The driver s door is misaligned and then there s also the driver s side view mirror not folding out completely not resetting to the right position if auto-fold is on or driver profiles are switched. Gave the car to the service center Thursday at 7:30 am still isn t in the shop. They tell me it s not even a guarantee that it ll be in the shop even by Monday. The worst part is the loaner they gave me is from Enterprise. Oh well there s nothing I can do about it lol. | When buying CPO can they give you a full report of all work done on the vehicle? | 35 | 4 | 855 |
5qrnci | 40 | Scientists discover metal that conducts electricity but not heat Hey saw this rad article today http: www.sciencealert.com physicists-have-found-a-metal-that-conducts-electricity-but-not-heat Assuming this is true and practical for use in the near future this could be a major breakthrough for many electric things especially Tesla cars (or any electric car really) that are limited in charging and output by heat conduction Thoughts? | This is a material that is conductive to electricity but an insulator (at least compared to most metals) to heat. This does not prevent heat from being produced through resistance so it will not prevent batteries from heating up when charging or discharging. In fact if this metal were used in batteries they would heat up even more because the heat wouldn t be conducted out of the cell as well. What this material IS useful for is producing more efficient thermo-electric devices. The efficiency of thermoelectric modules is limited by the fact that heat from the hot side conducts to the cold side. This material would limit that conduction loss. | Vanadium dioxide on the other hand is usually only a conductor at warm temperatures well above room temperature which means it has the ability to be a lot more practical. Limits ability when it is cold outside | 43 | 9 | 856 |
5qwfzd | 421 | Tormenting my fiance from afar with the Tesla App. I am in Ohio for some company business. I miss my Model X which is back home in Los Angeles. While I am gone my fiance has been driving the X everyday while I drive this cruddy Chevy Cruz rental. However I found the best remedy to this affliction is by spamming the Honk Horn button on the app whenever she least expects it. This means when she is sitting at a Supercharger. Or when she gets to work and just parked the car (using the location to monitor the car). Even better...we have Canary cameras in our house. If I see her on the couch watching TV honking the horn makes her jump. She also jumps when the app tells me the HomeLink was activated when she gets home and I give her 30 seconds to finish parking the car and gets out to plug it in and I happen to honk the horn. It is hilarious. She says she will get her revenge.... | holy cow. No secrets in that relationship lmao | Bravo. | 192 | 4 | 857 |
5qwfzd | 421 | Tormenting my fiance from afar with the Tesla App. I am in Ohio for some company business. I miss my Model X which is back home in Los Angeles. While I am gone my fiance has been driving the X everyday while I drive this cruddy Chevy Cruz rental. However I found the best remedy to this affliction is by spamming the Honk Horn button on the app whenever she least expects it. This means when she is sitting at a Supercharger. Or when she gets to work and just parked the car (using the location to monitor the car). Even better...we have Canary cameras in our house. If I see her on the couch watching TV honking the horn makes her jump. She also jumps when the app tells me the HomeLink was activated when she gets home and I give her 30 seconds to finish parking the car and gets out to plug it in and I happen to honk the horn. It is hilarious. She says she will get her revenge.... | holy cow. No secrets in that relationship lmao | I too do this all the time. Also crack the sunroof or change the temps on her. Really freaked out a couple if her friends when they went out.... she just rolls her eyes | 192 | 17 | 858 |
5qwfzd | 421 | Tormenting my fiance from afar with the Tesla App. I am in Ohio for some company business. I miss my Model X which is back home in Los Angeles. While I am gone my fiance has been driving the X everyday while I drive this cruddy Chevy Cruz rental. However I found the best remedy to this affliction is by spamming the Honk Horn button on the app whenever she least expects it. This means when she is sitting at a Supercharger. Or when she gets to work and just parked the car (using the location to monitor the car). Even better...we have Canary cameras in our house. If I see her on the couch watching TV honking the horn makes her jump. She also jumps when the app tells me the HomeLink was activated when she gets home and I give her 30 seconds to finish parking the car and gets out to plug it in and I happen to honk the horn. It is hilarious. She says she will get her revenge.... | I like to slowly change the thermostat on the car to either really hot or really cold to see how long until she notices that I am messing with her. | Bravo. | 129 | 4 | 859 |
5qy08i | 71 | How Elon Musk successfully slowed the aging process. I ordered a Tesla car at the end of October. Delivery to Italy takes 4 months. I have still 1 month of waiting ahead. Well these are the 4 longest months of my life. It seems that they last forever. | Was expecting this thread to be about his hair transplants. | The wait will be worth it. | 39 | 3 | 860 |
5r0wm1 | 82 | Missed the bus home offered a ride in Tesla! Last year I read Elon Musk s biography and since then I have been fascinated with Tesla which led me to this subreddit and then I made a reservation for a Model 3. There are a lot of Tesla Model S in my neighborhood. However I take the bus everywhere. On my bus ride to work I will often look out of the bus window as numerous Tesla Model S drive by and I dream about my Model 3. Last night my wife dragged me along to a BBQ which we went to by bus. Due to some dillydallying we missed the last bus home. I was not a happy camper however my mood soon changed when some other guests from the BBQ offered us a ride home in their Tesla Model S! On the ride home I had a good chat with the owner about the specs and I got to finally take in all the features I had only read about or seen fleetingly driving by me on the bus. This would be the one time in my life I am grateful for having missed the bus. | I try to offer people rides whenever possible. The future is here the more people know about it the sooner society can stop driving stink chariots. | Sounds pretty lucky. I like Tesla as well. | 46 | 2 | 861 |
5r0wm1 | 82 | Missed the bus home offered a ride in Tesla! Last year I read Elon Musk s biography and since then I have been fascinated with Tesla which led me to this subreddit and then I made a reservation for a Model 3. There are a lot of Tesla Model S in my neighborhood. However I take the bus everywhere. On my bus ride to work I will often look out of the bus window as numerous Tesla Model S drive by and I dream about my Model 3. Last night my wife dragged me along to a BBQ which we went to by bus. Due to some dillydallying we missed the last bus home. I was not a happy camper however my mood soon changed when some other guests from the BBQ offered us a ride home in their Tesla Model S! On the ride home I had a good chat with the owner about the specs and I got to finally take in all the features I had only read about or seen fleetingly driving by me on the bus. This would be the one time in my life I am grateful for having missed the bus. | I try to offer people rides whenever possible. The future is here the more people know about it the sooner society can stop driving stink chariots. | Amazing yall should keep in touch | 46 | 2 | 862 |
5r0wm1 | 82 | Missed the bus home offered a ride in Tesla! Last year I read Elon Musk s biography and since then I have been fascinated with Tesla which led me to this subreddit and then I made a reservation for a Model 3. There are a lot of Tesla Model S in my neighborhood. However I take the bus everywhere. On my bus ride to work I will often look out of the bus window as numerous Tesla Model S drive by and I dream about my Model 3. Last night my wife dragged me along to a BBQ which we went to by bus. Due to some dillydallying we missed the last bus home. I was not a happy camper however my mood soon changed when some other guests from the BBQ offered us a ride home in their Tesla Model S! On the ride home I had a good chat with the owner about the specs and I got to finally take in all the features I had only read about or seen fleetingly driving by me on the bus. This would be the one time in my life I am grateful for having missed the bus. | I try to offer people rides whenever possible. The future is here the more people know about it the sooner society can stop driving stink chariots. | You could also ask for a test-ride at one of Teslas stores. | 46 | 5 | 863 |
5rmuxp | 84 | Indiana bill to block Tesla update Edit: The bill was amended to grandfather in Tesla. 8:53AM Edit 1: Amended bill passes committee 9-1 to move forward but has yet to be posted publicly on the website. 9:00AM Edit 2: YouTube link to the morning proceedings and vote (how s that for fast!) https: www.youtube.com watch?v=r0oe8--7KjE 9:10AM Edit 3: Amendment is here: https: iga.in.gov static-documents 2 8 a b 28ab2bad HB1592.01.INTR.AMH05.pdf Edit 4: Electrek article (circular reference) https: electrek.co 2017 02 02 tesla-indiana-grandfathered-in-ban | Good for Tesla but still a terrible bill. There should be no dealer requirement. The continual What about service! argument is just silly. When the chair started in on Going to the dealer to ask for service records I thought So why in the world can t they ask the same from the Tesla Service Center? It s pure semantics. | Sooo thats good right? | 42 | 2 | 864 |
5rowh9 | 24 | Price difference between P100d and 100D is 60k in Canada that s ludicrous. For reference that s a 46k US difference. The prices for everything have gone up across the board as well a fully loaded P100d has jumped more than 10k on sticker price in past couple weeks as well. Canada is getting fucked. | > For reference that s a 46k US difference. In the US the difference between a base S100D and base SP100D is $42k. So $46k isn t *that* far off. | Oh how I wish the dollar was par. I would have been rolling around in a model S for years. Thats one expensive letter. | 31 | 4 | 865 |
5s0d02 | 42 | Should we be seeing Model 3 mules out on the roads by now? How long after we start seeing mules on the road does significant production ramp up? I feel like we should start seeing them if there will be large scale output this year. | There is a rumor they are running Model 3 chassis drivetrains inside of a Model S body. They also have indoor test tracks at the gigafactory. | maybe in q2 | 34 | 3 | 866 |
5s0d02 | 42 | Should we be seeing Model 3 mules out on the roads by now? How long after we start seeing mules on the road does significant production ramp up? I feel like we should start seeing them if there will be large scale output this year. | There is a rumor they are running Model 3 chassis drivetrains inside of a Model S body. They also have indoor test tracks at the gigafactory. | I read rumors here of potential model 3 sightings. Not sure if they were ever confirmed though but It wouldnt be impossible. | 34 | 7 | 867 |
5s57yi | 116 | Convinced my mom to opt out of a Range Rover for a Model X! it wasn t hard! the UI is a lot like an iPad to her which is great. All functionality on a central easy to use touch screen. She loved the faux leather option as she is passionate about animal preservation. It was an easy sell beacuse it s a great product! woot! | Doing good work there! 24mpg to 92mpge | Awesome! Are you the same person who asked this subreddit a few months ago how to persuade their mom from a Range Rover to a Model X? | 35 | 8 | 868 |
5sdu0w | 111 | I just got the shipping notification on the first of our 2 Model X 90Ds 😍 I am so excited I haven t even seen a RHD Model X in person yet but the first one has shipped! | What is better than one X? | How long does the shipping take for you? Is it weeks or months? | 32 | 4 | 869 |
5sgnf8 | 532 | In part of Reddit s frontpage algorithm revamp r TeslaMotors was notified that we made the cut and our sub will be listed as a Popular sub on Reddit s default pages for logged-out users. Learn more inside! For those interested about the front page revamp see this linked [post](https: www.reddit.com r modnews comments 5sghb1 introducing_popular ) that we received to learn more and how this will affect r TeslaMotors. Currently we are at a little over 100~ subscribers **per day**!. Here is the list of [Popular subreddits](https: www.reddit.com wiki popular) under this revamp. Very cool! **Edit: We currently are asking the community what you think we should do about this**. [See this post](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5slakd to_be_or_not_to_be_on_reddits_new_popular_list ) to share your thoughts. | Thats good news but I question the sort of attention it ll attract. You instantly see the quality of discussion drop every time we hit front page. | We ll be educating and enlightening more people than ever before! | 83 | 4 | 870 |
5sgnf8 | 532 | In part of Reddit s frontpage algorithm revamp r TeslaMotors was notified that we made the cut and our sub will be listed as a Popular sub on Reddit s default pages for logged-out users. Learn more inside! For those interested about the front page revamp see this linked [post](https: www.reddit.com r modnews comments 5sghb1 introducing_popular ) that we received to learn more and how this will affect r TeslaMotors. Currently we are at a little over 100~ subscribers **per day**!. Here is the list of [Popular subreddits](https: www.reddit.com wiki popular) under this revamp. Very cool! **Edit: We currently are asking the community what you think we should do about this**. [See this post](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5slakd to_be_or_not_to_be_on_reddits_new_popular_list ) to share your thoughts. | Thats good news but I question the sort of attention it ll attract. You instantly see the quality of discussion drop every time we hit front page. | Congrats! | 83 | 5 | 871 |
5sgnf8 | 532 | In part of Reddit s frontpage algorithm revamp r TeslaMotors was notified that we made the cut and our sub will be listed as a Popular sub on Reddit s default pages for logged-out users. Learn more inside! For those interested about the front page revamp see this linked [post](https: www.reddit.com r modnews comments 5sghb1 introducing_popular ) that we received to learn more and how this will affect r TeslaMotors. Currently we are at a little over 100~ subscribers **per day**!. Here is the list of [Popular subreddits](https: www.reddit.com wiki popular) under this revamp. Very cool! **Edit: We currently are asking the community what you think we should do about this**. [See this post](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5slakd to_be_or_not_to_be_on_reddits_new_popular_list ) to share your thoughts. | Thats good news but I question the sort of attention it ll attract. You instantly see the quality of discussion drop every time we hit front page. | Is this because of the Rainbow Road easter egg in our TESLA header? | 83 | 6 | 872 |
5sib1n | 57 | Tesla owners what has your experience been like after the honeymoon period. I am interested in owners of all Tesla vehicles experiences especially those who have had their vehicle long enough to be over the honeymoon and can objectively quantify what ownership has and will continue to mean for them. I am interested in all aspects of ownership positive and negative subjective and objective. This is not a Sell me on Tesla post I am firmly sold and short of reports that driving a Tesla will summon Cthulhu as a backseat driver.. Nope still sold on it. Please put your model or models (if you have experience with more than one) in your post as well as any options you feel have impacted your experience. From garage to highway parking to valet service and everything in between. Anyone with experience with gravel and dirt roads rural area ownership and medium sized dogs as copilots your experiences would be doubly appreciated. Thanks | Model S 90D owner hands-down one of the best things I ve purchased in my life -- I m not a believer in money buying happiness but man a Tesla Model S has brought me quite a bit. I ve had my Tesla for 8 months and still smile ear-to-ear while I m driving. I still try to find reasons to go drive and very much look forward to driving every day. I ve thought a lot about why -- I think it s a combination of incredible power handling an intelligent car (AP) that seems to be looking out for you constantly smooth suspension (SAS) that lifts you away from the road and into (what my girlfriend calls) a spaceship beautiful and minimal look and feel and immersive sound system (premium sound). The car feels like another world I get lost in my music and have way too much fun accelerating from stoplights. It just doesn t get old. There s definitely an X factor as well that I can t pinpoint exactly. But driving a Tesla is an immersive sexy fun experience. And it seems to get better over time. A friend asked me the other day if I ll ever buy another car brand. My answer is a solid Tesla for life at this point and it would take an incredible effort from another company to match exceed Tesla in the holistic driving experience. Case and point: the other night I spontaneously decided I wanted to drive up to Santa Barbara for the sunset (couple hours drive from LA) and did so for FREE using Superchargers and enjoyed a podcast while Autopilot did the hard work (especially through some traffic). Driving Tesla is just an amazing experience. | if you go performance probably best to debadge. ive had far too many people driving worryingly aggressive around me trying to.. race or something. im just trying to go home damit! | 78 | 24 | 873 |
5ssj3i | 73 | AP2.0 owners do you have logs from your home router to see how much data your car is sending Tesla? I m super curious about how much data the cars are sending back to Tesla. Are they sending hours of raw video from all 8 cameras? Are they sending multiple GBs of data every night? I haven t seen this discussed anywhere. | I m an AP 2.0 owner. While on my home Wifi my Tesla has uploaded 300 MB of data. It has also downloaded 8.2 GB of data but I know that my car downloaded a few updates while I ve been away from home. [Imgur](http: i.imgur.com LaAXyK4.png) | I could be wrong but I would guess that Tesla s servers would be overwhelmed if each car was sending back gigabytes of data. | 36 | 5 | 874 |
5tc269 | 22 | Won t paying for the internet in all 400k Model 3s get expensive quick? Even if Tesla was paying $15 a month for internet in all their Model 3s currently on order they would be spending $6 million a month. I know long term Elon plans on getting his own satellite internet going. But I would imagine that is still 3-5yrs out. Think Tesla will start charging customers for it? Only give 1-2yrs free with a new purchase? | Amazon somehow is able to let millions and millions of Kindle owners have free Internet access and those are devices which cost less than $100. I doubt Tesla will have any issues with this especially since corporations don t pay $15 per user per month for their devices to access the Internet. | so 400k cars at an average price of $42k (what I recall Elon expecting as the average price) is $16.8 billion with a b . I don t think they ll miss $6 million per month (or $72 year - 0.42% of the vehicle cost per year) especially when you consider they don t intend to make those sales for one year and then stop. That is all based on the assumption they don t negotiate cheaper prices with telcos or get customers to pay for data connections (which I don t expect them to do for the data that Tesla collects) | 44 | 2 | 875 |
5tc269 | 22 | Won t paying for the internet in all 400k Model 3s get expensive quick? Even if Tesla was paying $15 a month for internet in all their Model 3s currently on order they would be spending $6 million a month. I know long term Elon plans on getting his own satellite internet going. But I would imagine that is still 3-5yrs out. Think Tesla will start charging customers for it? Only give 1-2yrs free with a new purchase? | Amazon somehow is able to let millions and millions of Kindle owners have free Internet access and those are devices which cost less than $100. I doubt Tesla will have any issues with this especially since corporations don t pay $15 per user per month for their devices to access the Internet. | Wireless carriers charge customers a lot more than they charge a large company for the same amount of connectivity! Plus there s not many ways for customers to abuse the service and use excessive amounts of data (e.g. Why hotspot tethering isn t available) | 44 | 5 | 876 |
5tc269 | 22 | Won t paying for the internet in all 400k Model 3s get expensive quick? Even if Tesla was paying $15 a month for internet in all their Model 3s currently on order they would be spending $6 million a month. I know long term Elon plans on getting his own satellite internet going. But I would imagine that is still 3-5yrs out. Think Tesla will start charging customers for it? Only give 1-2yrs free with a new purchase? | Amazon somehow is able to let millions and millions of Kindle owners have free Internet access and those are devices which cost less than $100. I doubt Tesla will have any issues with this especially since corporations don t pay $15 per user per month for their devices to access the Internet. | $15 month out of a $35000+ car is not what I d call expensive. Selling 400k doesn t make it expensive since that changes how you define expensive . | 44 | 8 | 877 |
5tvim5 | 504 | Have a new hot wheels car? Post it! -- Just kidding. It ll be removed. Updated Rule 4. [r teslamotors about rules](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors about rules) **Edit**: I should make it clear that removals won t apply to comments. These may be integrated into a future Spotting Delivery Just Purchased Vanity License Plate bi-weekly thread. | Thank you there are too many of these. There was literally a post that was a picture of a pot hole near a super charger a month ago. | Thank you!! | 87 | 3 | 878 |
5tvim5 | 504 | Have a new hot wheels car? Post it! -- Just kidding. It ll be removed. Updated Rule 4. [r teslamotors about rules](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors about rules) **Edit**: I should make it clear that removals won t apply to comments. These may be integrated into a future Spotting Delivery Just Purchased Vanity License Plate bi-weekly thread. | Thank you there are too many of these. There was literally a post that was a picture of a pot hole near a super charger a month ago. | Wise desicion. | 87 | 4 | 879 |
5tvim5 | 504 | Have a new hot wheels car? Post it! -- Just kidding. It ll be removed. Updated Rule 4. [r teslamotors about rules](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors about rules) **Edit**: I should make it clear that removals won t apply to comments. These may be integrated into a future Spotting Delivery Just Purchased Vanity License Plate bi-weekly thread. | Thank you there are too many of these. There was literally a post that was a picture of a pot hole near a super charger a month ago. | In my opinion this might be a little bit overreaching. If people didn t like the hot wheels car posts wouldn t they downvote them? Subreddit rules are meant to keep relevancy not to filter to the best content. That s what upvoting is for. That being said It s not a big deal. | 87 | 8 | 880 |
5txhxj | 213 | A thank you note to Tesla Hello everyone. I just recently found this subreddit so I figured it would be as good a time as any to share how Tesla changed my life. I live in an arguably close-minded household in which my family members (mom and step family) who love me dearly fail to see the benefit of saving our beautiful planet technology altogether and owning a Tesla vehicle. They believe space travel is a waste of time and money and they think Elon Musk is a money grabbing prick who can t see how the real Americans live. So you know what I m up against here. I got into programming about 4 years ago when I was in the 7th grade because of a project I did on Elon Musk and Tesla Motors Inc. I always remember my dad telling me stories of the moon landing and the Shuttle missions as well as the first computers being built. Ever since I have strive to feel that rush the rush of something new being discovered or invented. Once I did research into what Tesla was doing and how Elon Musk was going to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday lives and once I realized this was all going to unfold in my lifetime I felt the rush that I was looking for. I wrote on my wall in sharpie my favorite quote from Elon: Really the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment. From that point on I wanted to help not only my family but everyone on this wonderful planet to embrace the future. I began programming more and more built my first computer and started taking more engineering courses in highschool. I am a Junior this year and just sent in my application to UT at Austin to get a degree in Software Engineering with the ultimate goal of working at Tesla someday. So that s it. Thank you Tesla. You are the sole reason I am where I am today and I believe that I can make the world a better place because of you. Thank you :-) | Software Engineer Tesla fan and Elon-mancrush-extraordinaire here. Keep following your dreams! Let that rush push your and drive you. Never give up! :) | Hope to see you here at UT soon I m studying MechE and also a big Tesla fan. Good luck. | 53 | 9 | 881 |
5txhxj | 213 | A thank you note to Tesla Hello everyone. I just recently found this subreddit so I figured it would be as good a time as any to share how Tesla changed my life. I live in an arguably close-minded household in which my family members (mom and step family) who love me dearly fail to see the benefit of saving our beautiful planet technology altogether and owning a Tesla vehicle. They believe space travel is a waste of time and money and they think Elon Musk is a money grabbing prick who can t see how the real Americans live. So you know what I m up against here. I got into programming about 4 years ago when I was in the 7th grade because of a project I did on Elon Musk and Tesla Motors Inc. I always remember my dad telling me stories of the moon landing and the Shuttle missions as well as the first computers being built. Ever since I have strive to feel that rush the rush of something new being discovered or invented. Once I did research into what Tesla was doing and how Elon Musk was going to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday lives and once I realized this was all going to unfold in my lifetime I felt the rush that I was looking for. I wrote on my wall in sharpie my favorite quote from Elon: Really the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment. From that point on I wanted to help not only my family but everyone on this wonderful planet to embrace the future. I began programming more and more built my first computer and started taking more engineering courses in highschool. I am a Junior this year and just sent in my application to UT at Austin to get a degree in Software Engineering with the ultimate goal of working at Tesla someday. So that s it. Thank you Tesla. You are the sole reason I am where I am today and I believe that I can make the world a better place because of you. Thank you :-) | Software Engineer Tesla fan and Elon-mancrush-extraordinaire here. Keep following your dreams! Let that rush push your and drive you. Never give up! :) | This is wonderful! Don t stop your pursuit! | 53 | 10 | 882 |
5txhxj | 213 | A thank you note to Tesla Hello everyone. I just recently found this subreddit so I figured it would be as good a time as any to share how Tesla changed my life. I live in an arguably close-minded household in which my family members (mom and step family) who love me dearly fail to see the benefit of saving our beautiful planet technology altogether and owning a Tesla vehicle. They believe space travel is a waste of time and money and they think Elon Musk is a money grabbing prick who can t see how the real Americans live. So you know what I m up against here. I got into programming about 4 years ago when I was in the 7th grade because of a project I did on Elon Musk and Tesla Motors Inc. I always remember my dad telling me stories of the moon landing and the Shuttle missions as well as the first computers being built. Ever since I have strive to feel that rush the rush of something new being discovered or invented. Once I did research into what Tesla was doing and how Elon Musk was going to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday lives and once I realized this was all going to unfold in my lifetime I felt the rush that I was looking for. I wrote on my wall in sharpie my favorite quote from Elon: Really the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment. From that point on I wanted to help not only my family but everyone on this wonderful planet to embrace the future. I began programming more and more built my first computer and started taking more engineering courses in highschool. I am a Junior this year and just sent in my application to UT at Austin to get a degree in Software Engineering with the ultimate goal of working at Tesla someday. So that s it. Thank you Tesla. You are the sole reason I am where I am today and I believe that I can make the world a better place because of you. Thank you :-) | Software Engineer Tesla fan and Elon-mancrush-extraordinaire here. Keep following your dreams! Let that rush push your and drive you. Never give up! :) | Well said. I m looking forward to great things from you and your generation. Go get em u dodthan! | 53 | 14 | 883 |
5u7nxu | 112 | Ron Baron gives TSLA price target for 4 years 9 years and 13 years. Using his cost base of $205 he expects to gain 4X by 2020 another 3X from 2020 to 2025 then another 3X from 2025 to 2030. The final target is $7380 in 13 years. Those who think my $8000 target is BS try argue with Ron. Ron is the best at picking high growth companies (let me know if you have a different name in mind). He made many 10 20 50 baggers in the past. Tesla is his all time favorite ( The most interesting company in my lifetime ). Having said that I don t recommend to jump on now with full margin. You have to understand the company and the risks. You need a plan set an allocation target gradually reach your target. Ron only has 2% of his (money under management) on TSLA. But he keeps adding slowly from time to time. Never use margin. | Ok that s enough. Calling you out. For all the talk I see about someone being labelled as a shill when someone speaks negatively about Tesla you are the epitome of a shill in the other direction. You are constantly talking about TSLA stock and how it is undervalued how people should buy etc. You are literally shilling for Tesla stock. For all the suspicion people have about those pessimistic on Tesla as being short sellers or people with an interest in seeing the stock go down I can t believe no one calls you out as someone who *admittedly has a large amount on money invested in Tesla* and is *actively encouraging people to buy it and further improve his position*. This is essentially self-promotion for your own personal gain. For you or anyone to tell me oh come on one person in a Tesla forum can t influence stock prices ok then you should never discuss shorts or accuse people of using this forum for the opposite result. | wttff that is insane!!!! | 73 | 2 | 884 |
5u7nxu | 112 | Ron Baron gives TSLA price target for 4 years 9 years and 13 years. Using his cost base of $205 he expects to gain 4X by 2020 another 3X from 2020 to 2025 then another 3X from 2025 to 2030. The final target is $7380 in 13 years. Those who think my $8000 target is BS try argue with Ron. Ron is the best at picking high growth companies (let me know if you have a different name in mind). He made many 10 20 50 baggers in the past. Tesla is his all time favorite ( The most interesting company in my lifetime ). Having said that I don t recommend to jump on now with full margin. You have to understand the company and the risks. You need a plan set an allocation target gradually reach your target. Ron only has 2% of his (money under management) on TSLA. But he keeps adding slowly from time to time. Never use margin. | Ok that s enough. Calling you out. For all the talk I see about someone being labelled as a shill when someone speaks negatively about Tesla you are the epitome of a shill in the other direction. You are constantly talking about TSLA stock and how it is undervalued how people should buy etc. You are literally shilling for Tesla stock. For all the suspicion people have about those pessimistic on Tesla as being short sellers or people with an interest in seeing the stock go down I can t believe no one calls you out as someone who *admittedly has a large amount on money invested in Tesla* and is *actively encouraging people to buy it and further improve his position*. This is essentially self-promotion for your own personal gain. For you or anyone to tell me oh come on one person in a Tesla forum can t influence stock prices ok then you should never discuss shorts or accuse people of using this forum for the opposite result. | Not sure if Tesla hits $1 trillion market cap in 15 years but SpaceX will. | 73 | 2 | 885 |
5u7nxu | 112 | Ron Baron gives TSLA price target for 4 years 9 years and 13 years. Using his cost base of $205 he expects to gain 4X by 2020 another 3X from 2020 to 2025 then another 3X from 2025 to 2030. The final target is $7380 in 13 years. Those who think my $8000 target is BS try argue with Ron. Ron is the best at picking high growth companies (let me know if you have a different name in mind). He made many 10 20 50 baggers in the past. Tesla is his all time favorite ( The most interesting company in my lifetime ). Having said that I don t recommend to jump on now with full margin. You have to understand the company and the risks. You need a plan set an allocation target gradually reach your target. Ron only has 2% of his (money under management) on TSLA. But he keeps adding slowly from time to time. Never use margin. | Ok that s enough. Calling you out. For all the talk I see about someone being labelled as a shill when someone speaks negatively about Tesla you are the epitome of a shill in the other direction. You are constantly talking about TSLA stock and how it is undervalued how people should buy etc. You are literally shilling for Tesla stock. For all the suspicion people have about those pessimistic on Tesla as being short sellers or people with an interest in seeing the stock go down I can t believe no one calls you out as someone who *admittedly has a large amount on money invested in Tesla* and is *actively encouraging people to buy it and further improve his position*. This is essentially self-promotion for your own personal gain. For you or anyone to tell me oh come on one person in a Tesla forum can t influence stock prices ok then you should never discuss shorts or accuse people of using this forum for the opposite result. | So you re saying 2nd mortgage my house and buy TSLA? | 73 | 2 | 886 |
5uhjf1 | 582 | How many of you were not car people before Tesla? I never cared at all about cars until I heard about Tesla. Now I follow the news from all kinds of manufacturers. Given the hype and energy I ve seen surrounding Tesla I imagine I m not alone. Who s with me? | I come from car people. Race cars. Exotics. Mechanics. You name it. Cars are second nature to me. I ve lived and breathed cars. But I never cared about the industry before. I never cared how many units a company sold. I never cared about product lineups. Tesla has shifted my entire passion about cars to electrics. Every other car company is just legacy to me. | I never cared about any cars before Tesla now Im obsessed! Getting my P100D on tuesday! | 207 | 120 | 887 |
5uhjf1 | 582 | How many of you were not car people before Tesla? I never cared at all about cars until I heard about Tesla. Now I follow the news from all kinds of manufacturers. Given the hype and energy I ve seen surrounding Tesla I imagine I m not alone. Who s with me? | I am more of an eoc-efficiency nerd. As an adult I didn t care much about cars much until hybrids made it possible to drive using much less gas. When I was a kid I fantasized about owning a Porsche one day now that I have the money I can t see myself ever buying one. | I make pizza and mix drinks for a living (family business ). Hence why i want a Tesla! I m not a car fanatic or i d be driving some souped up bmw. I will hand wash my Tesla! :) | 70 | 6 | 888 |
5uhjf1 | 582 | How many of you were not car people before Tesla? I never cared at all about cars until I heard about Tesla. Now I follow the news from all kinds of manufacturers. Given the hype and energy I ve seen surrounding Tesla I imagine I m not alone. Who s with me? | I am more of an eoc-efficiency nerd. As an adult I didn t care much about cars much until hybrids made it possible to drive using much less gas. When I was a kid I fantasized about owning a Porsche one day now that I have the money I can t see myself ever buying one. | I am was a muscle car type.. now that is starting to change. I am all about vehicles motorcycles any thing that goes fast! | 70 | 7 | 889 |
5uidrj | 132 | Tesla has ruined my life! How is it ever going to be possible for me to drive another car? Any car after this I ll immediately assume will present door handles and unlock for me lock up when I walk away and be ready to go without needing to be started. I ve never driven a car like this in my life and now that I come to realize that this should rated as a schedule II vehicle. | I ended up buying a used Tesla. Apparently spending $48 000 on a used vehicle is the new me being conservative. | Happy cake day! | 29 | 2 | 890 |
5uidrj | 132 | Tesla has ruined my life! How is it ever going to be possible for me to drive another car? Any car after this I ll immediately assume will present door handles and unlock for me lock up when I walk away and be ready to go without needing to be started. I ve never driven a car like this in my life and now that I come to realize that this should rated as a schedule II vehicle. | I ended up buying a used Tesla. Apparently spending $48 000 on a used vehicle is the new me being conservative. | I have an impossible time with rental cars. I forget to start them. I once spent three minutes trying to figure out why the key wouldn t come out of the ignition (oh yeah... you have to turn the car off AND put it in park)... | 29 | 3 | 891 |
5unyqg | 67 | Are you looking forward to Tesla becoming a mass-market brand? This question is inspired by discussion in the recent [How many of you were not car people before Tesla?](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5uhjf1 how_many_of_you_were_not_car_people_before_tesla ) thread. It also partially overlaps with [Should Tesla build an economy model?](https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 4h88nc should_tesla_build_an_economy_model ) posted by u manbearpyg last year. Tesla never meant to build a premium auto brand except as a means to the end of accelerat[ing] the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible. ([blog](https: www.tesla.com blog mission-tesla)) The cachet that comes with Model S X ownership is going to dissipate over time as Model 3 becomes the main uh vehicle of Tesla s brand. Model 3 will still be an expensive car but not too expensive anyone willing to add a couple hundred dollars to a typical monthly payment will be able to afford it. How do you feel about this inevitable shift in brand connotation? Are you looking forward to the Tesla badge representing a great car that happens to be electric and not so much a luxury brand? I ll go first. My last car was a Prius. The car before that was a base-model Honda Fit. Before that a Honda Accord whose wheels finally fell off. I have a Model 3 reservation and I m looking forward to driving a car that s agnostic about the owner s financial situation and that I can park in the crowded part of the mall parking lot (door dings). It s been fun owning a status symbol for the last couple years but I never wanted that to be a part of my identity. | My greatest concern is the service parts routine maintenance and body damage repairs. I think right to repair access to manuals etc. should be implemented everywhere. Without that there s no competition. Without competition you ve got trouble. | > Are you looking forward to the Tesla badge representing a great car that happens to be electric and not so much a luxury brand? I m not. I am a car guy. I like to drive cars that are a little unusual special or cool. That doesn t have to mean expensive but it can. Even driving inexpensive cars I often picked unusual or unique ones. For example I had a positively beautiful Chrysler 200 with every option and a convertible hard top. It wasn t expensive but it was cool. I also had a BMW 330i and an Infiniti FX35... and a 1995 Olds Cutlass Supreme Convertible red with a white top. That s a car that gets noticed. I don t have a problem at all with the Model 3 but I don t want Tesla to try to be all things to all people and wind up not doing any of it very well. If I m paying $70 000+ for a car I want it to have the quality of a $70 000+ car. I ve been a little uncomfortable with the rate at which Tesla is removing choices from the Model S. I know it s to streamline manufacturing but that doesn t mean I like it. | 41 | 6 | 892 |
5utshp | 207 | Repairs (parts shortage) will be the unraveling of Tesla Let me first state that I love my Tesla. Heck I plan on selling my P85D soon to buy whatever comes after the P100DL. However Tesla needs to be careful that they don t mess up their entry into the mainstream market by having sever parts shortages. I got into a minor accident 95 days ago. I needed a new rear quarter panel and some other assorted parts. My car is still in the shop waiting for parts. Three. MONTHS. Later. Now like most current Tesla owners I have the means to make this not so painful - I just rented a car for a few months. Out of pocket though this repair cost me thousands of dollars in car rental costs. When the model 3 launches there are going to be lots of people buying these cars that simply can t afford to wait months and months to have their cars fixes - if that happens Tesla is going to be in some shit. With the pressure to fulfill orders I doubt that the parts shortage will be any better for the 3 than it is for the S. I actually think it will be substantially worse. I d hate to see such a great product tank because they can t make enough parts to fix the cars that are on the road. I know Tesla says they re aware of this issue but I don t think they know what the real pain of a many-month wait is for most people. Get your shit together Tesla :-) | As a Model 3 reservation holder I admit the service aspect scares me to death. There s no way I can afford to rent a car for months if my Model 3 is out of commission for weeks at a time. | I ve always seen the stories and I know that it s a problem. I would have to think that making parts would be a lot easier than making a whole car so I think that they needed to focus on producing panels at a higher rate either at the factory or a different location I think they would be able to do that provided they plan ahead. | 75 | 3 | 893 |
5utshp | 207 | Repairs (parts shortage) will be the unraveling of Tesla Let me first state that I love my Tesla. Heck I plan on selling my P85D soon to buy whatever comes after the P100DL. However Tesla needs to be careful that they don t mess up their entry into the mainstream market by having sever parts shortages. I got into a minor accident 95 days ago. I needed a new rear quarter panel and some other assorted parts. My car is still in the shop waiting for parts. Three. MONTHS. Later. Now like most current Tesla owners I have the means to make this not so painful - I just rented a car for a few months. Out of pocket though this repair cost me thousands of dollars in car rental costs. When the model 3 launches there are going to be lots of people buying these cars that simply can t afford to wait months and months to have their cars fixes - if that happens Tesla is going to be in some shit. With the pressure to fulfill orders I doubt that the parts shortage will be any better for the 3 than it is for the S. I actually think it will be substantially worse. I d hate to see such a great product tank because they can t make enough parts to fix the cars that are on the road. I know Tesla says they re aware of this issue but I don t think they know what the real pain of a many-month wait is for most people. Get your shit together Tesla :-) | As a Model 3 reservation holder I admit the service aspect scares me to death. There s no way I can afford to rent a car for months if my Model 3 is out of commission for weeks at a time. | Maybe this is a silly question but if this is a minor accident with what I assume is cosmetic damage could you not drive your Tesla until parts arrive? May not look great but I d take a bruised Tesla over a non-Tesla rental any day. | 75 | 4 | 894 |
5utshp | 207 | Repairs (parts shortage) will be the unraveling of Tesla Let me first state that I love my Tesla. Heck I plan on selling my P85D soon to buy whatever comes after the P100DL. However Tesla needs to be careful that they don t mess up their entry into the mainstream market by having sever parts shortages. I got into a minor accident 95 days ago. I needed a new rear quarter panel and some other assorted parts. My car is still in the shop waiting for parts. Three. MONTHS. Later. Now like most current Tesla owners I have the means to make this not so painful - I just rented a car for a few months. Out of pocket though this repair cost me thousands of dollars in car rental costs. When the model 3 launches there are going to be lots of people buying these cars that simply can t afford to wait months and months to have their cars fixes - if that happens Tesla is going to be in some shit. With the pressure to fulfill orders I doubt that the parts shortage will be any better for the 3 than it is for the S. I actually think it will be substantially worse. I d hate to see such a great product tank because they can t make enough parts to fix the cars that are on the road. I know Tesla says they re aware of this issue but I don t think they know what the real pain of a many-month wait is for most people. Get your shit together Tesla :-) | As a Model 3 reservation holder I admit the service aspect scares me to death. There s no way I can afford to rent a car for months if my Model 3 is out of commission for weeks at a time. | One of my concerns with this is the double edged sword of constant model improvements. It leads to confusion and stock difficulties if you ve got 10 different styles of widget none of which are tied to a specific model year to begin with. Will they have the touchscreen bezel for a 2013 in 2019? Will they still produce the rear driver side arm rest for a 2012 come 2020? Or will junkyards aftermarket be the only option? And if junkyard aftermarket is the only option they ll HAVE to open up manuals etc so people can deal with that! | 75 | 22 | 895 |
5uv0at | 175 | My Tesla won t reverse I m in a mall parking lot and now just heading to leave get in the car and put it into reverse and put my foot on the accelerator pedal and it just keeps inching forward there s a car in front of me so I m relatively stuck. It still shows that it s in Reverse but it keeps going forward. I called Service and they re heading here to tow the car and bring it to the SC and won t be able to have a look at it until Monday. First problem I ve had with the Model X AP2 90D. UPDATE: Alright guys sorry didn t update you it was a long night and I was stuck for like 2-3 hours there so anyways while I was on the phone with Tesla they couldn t come up with any tricks that would help so the flatbed driver came supposedly he said he was the Tesla expert for his company I was like alright let s see what he can do. He gets here and he starts messing with the settings raises the suspension lowering it. Finally puts it into tow mode ON and then turns it back off and puts it into reverse and he gets it to reverse! The awesome tow driver with a local city towing company knew how to fix it better than Tesla service reps! Lol thanks everyone for the concerns. Not trying to bring down the reps because they were super helpful and apologetic but I understood and just had to wait it out! There s no point in getting angry at anyone cause it s just a little glitch that can always be fixed with a software update! I love my Tesla! | Reverse is a software upgrade that costs $1500. | If you put it in Drive does it move backwards? | 163 | 4 | 896 |
5uv0at | 175 | My Tesla won t reverse I m in a mall parking lot and now just heading to leave get in the car and put it into reverse and put my foot on the accelerator pedal and it just keeps inching forward there s a car in front of me so I m relatively stuck. It still shows that it s in Reverse but it keeps going forward. I called Service and they re heading here to tow the car and bring it to the SC and won t be able to have a look at it until Monday. First problem I ve had with the Model X AP2 90D. UPDATE: Alright guys sorry didn t update you it was a long night and I was stuck for like 2-3 hours there so anyways while I was on the phone with Tesla they couldn t come up with any tricks that would help so the flatbed driver came supposedly he said he was the Tesla expert for his company I was like alright let s see what he can do. He gets here and he starts messing with the settings raises the suspension lowering it. Finally puts it into tow mode ON and then turns it back off and puts it into reverse and he gets it to reverse! The awesome tow driver with a local city towing company knew how to fix it better than Tesla service reps! Lol thanks everyone for the concerns. Not trying to bring down the reps because they were super helpful and apologetic but I understood and just had to wait it out! There s no point in getting angry at anyone cause it s just a little glitch that can always be fixed with a software update! I love my Tesla! | Reverse is a software upgrade that costs $1500. | Hopefully after an hour you have gotten yourself unstuck but thought I d chime in anyway. Do you have creep mode enabled? The car will roll forward on a decline without it turned on. You can also hold your foot on the brake and lightly push on the accelerator to see which way the car wants to move now that you have so little room between you and the car in front of you. Good way to test if the car wants to move the right direction in your situation. | 163 | 6 | 897 |
5uv0at | 175 | My Tesla won t reverse I m in a mall parking lot and now just heading to leave get in the car and put it into reverse and put my foot on the accelerator pedal and it just keeps inching forward there s a car in front of me so I m relatively stuck. It still shows that it s in Reverse but it keeps going forward. I called Service and they re heading here to tow the car and bring it to the SC and won t be able to have a look at it until Monday. First problem I ve had with the Model X AP2 90D. UPDATE: Alright guys sorry didn t update you it was a long night and I was stuck for like 2-3 hours there so anyways while I was on the phone with Tesla they couldn t come up with any tricks that would help so the flatbed driver came supposedly he said he was the Tesla expert for his company I was like alright let s see what he can do. He gets here and he starts messing with the settings raises the suspension lowering it. Finally puts it into tow mode ON and then turns it back off and puts it into reverse and he gets it to reverse! The awesome tow driver with a local city towing company knew how to fix it better than Tesla service reps! Lol thanks everyone for the concerns. Not trying to bring down the reps because they were super helpful and apologetic but I understood and just had to wait it out! There s no point in getting angry at anyone cause it s just a little glitch that can always be fixed with a software update! I love my Tesla! | Reverse is a software upgrade that costs $1500. | Sounds similar: https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 3qckis update_bug_70d_failed_to_go_into_reverse edit: more like this: https: www.reddit.com r teslamotors comments 5lplpb weird_exp_set_my_vehicle_in_reverse_i_could_see | 163 | 8 | 898 |
5viqis | 227 | Tesla Q4 full year 2016 financial results and conference call (5:30pm UTC-4) [Official thread] Please keep all posts related to the earnings shareholders letter and conference call in this post. I will add the shareholders letter here as soon as it becomes available which should be a few minutes after market close. * [Tesla Conference Call](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm) * [Tesla shareholder letter](http: files.shareholder.com downloads ABEA-4CW8X0 3943965853x0x929284 22C29259-6C19-41AC-9CAB-899D148F323D TSLA_Update_Letter_2016-4Q.pdf) ______________________________ Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its fourth quarter and full year 2016 financial results today after market close. As usual the release of the results will be followed by **a conference call and Q& A with Tesla s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4)**. Now here s what to expect on Wednesday: **Deliveries** The company already disclosed its delivery number for the last quarter and the full year: 22 200 delivered and 24 882 produced in Q4 full-year deliveries 76 230 slightly below expectations of 80 000. https: i.imgur.com mGzA203.jpg **Revenue** Wall Street s revenue consensus is $2.201 billion for the quarter while Estimize the financial estimate crowdsourcing website predicts $2.243 billion in revenue. That s down from Tesla s actual revenue of $2.298 billion during the last quarter and up from $1.747 billion in revenue in Q4 2015. The predictions for Tesla s revenue over the past 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com nLyJlWY.jpg As you can see Tesla beat both Wall Street and Estimize consensus for revenue over the last two quarters. This quarter s revenue estimates are just slightly below last quarter s result which makes sense since Tesla s vehicle deliveries are down by a couple thousand vehicles but they also deployed several important new Powerpack projects and some of SolarCity revenue should be accounted for though it s not clear how that will be accounted at this point. **Earnings** Earnings per share or rather loss per share is expected to thread really close to 0 for the quarter and an overall loss for the full year. The Wall Street consensus is a loss of $0.13 per share for the quarter while Estimize s prediction is a slight loss of $0.05 per share. Earnings per share over the last 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com lWjtRTi.jpg Of course last quarter s estimates were quite wrong since Tesla surprised everyone with a gain and while a surprise is not out of the question this quarter again it would be even more surprising than in Q3 because of the delivery miss. **Other expectations for the shareholders letter and analyst call** Again the biggest thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is an update on Model 3 – more specifically a guidance for overall deliveries in 2017 including Model 3 deliveries. If Tesla is still on track to start deliveries this summer people will want to know how quickly they can be expected to ramp up to volume production. Company officials have so far been very vague on the subject. The best estimate was released by Musk as a guess of 100 000 to 200 000 units which most industry analysts don t believe to be possible. The other important thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is how Tesla will report ‘Tesla Energy and ‘SolarCity financials in its results. Of course they will also want an update on how the integration of SolarCity into Tesla has been going since the merger was approved just over 2 months ago. Again Tesla will release the results after market close today and management will hold a conference call with Q& A at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4). You can join on the call through Tesla s[ investor relations website](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm). | **Call ~~Summary~~ Notes that drag on way too long** * Jason Wheeler to leave Tesla in April to pursue public policy Deepak Ahuja will return as CFO * Adam Jonas asks about Elon s balance of time between Tesla and SpaceX Elon plans to stay with Tesla until he s kicked out. Potentially accelerated Mars mission thanks to Trump administration will not change his balance of time between companies. * Adam Jonas asks about Tesla offering insurance due to massively increased safety and John McNeill says they are piloting that program in Asia. Elon thinks insurance providers will do a good job adjusting appropriately thanks to safety improvements * Elon talks about Model 3 production simplicity compared to S and X 1 screen vs 2 screens 1.5km of wiring vs 3km no self-presenting door handles better suppliers compared to S and X and general amount of increased automation. * Also touched on Model 3 components produced at Gigafactory (did he say power electronics and chargers?) and significant engineering resources put into the factory rather than the car itself. * Elon touches on how production is only as fast as the slowest component so over time they are minimizing issues with these problematic suppliers. Elon bemoans being a public company because a small delay can significantly affect a single quarter. * re: less than expected revenue from Autopilot—Elon says there were challenges in transition from MobileEye to internal. They originally wanted to have both running at the same time but MobileEye refused to cooperate in that manner. They had to cross the Rubicon with Tesla Vision. Safety is their primary concern could have released high speed 3 months ago but want exhaustive testing process. Might get to 80mph next month. * Jason touches on increased effort for solar sales vs leasing reduced customer acquisition costs on solar nothing really specific here * Is the lack of second half numbers on S and X in the second half due to potential disruption from Model 3? JB says effectively says no not really. It s just a matter of when the s curve happens. * Any word on when configuration for Model 3 might open? Elon ignored this because he s pissed about Unions (hot take by me). * Unionization? Elon says there is a strong effort by the UAW. Elon will be posting blog update in the next day or two (Elon time) he wants to get it right. Injury rate is less than half of industry average. Including stock options compensation is by far the highest in the industry. He says there are only disadvantages to UAW and doesn t find it likely to occur. * Elon mentions how environmental regulations and subsidies have only come up briefly but his response is that he s OK with removing subsidies if its done across the board for fossil fuels. Administration did not give a response to that input. * Elon says if incentives disappeared tomorrow Tesla would have a competitive advantage. Touches on how ZEV credits are effectively worth 2x to Chevy compared to Tesla because Tesla sells so many EVs. Thinks it s ironic that getting rid of it would help Tesla. * Decline is deposits on balance sheet was from Signature Model X that had yet to be delivered. Jason says they are still in great shape on Model 3. Elon says they are still anti-selling Model 3 and Jason? says they don t want to make the line longer. * Model 3 will not be profitable on Day 1 early Model 3 will be horrible negative margins on Day 1. As they get closer to 5 000 week Elon expects gross margins close to S and X. Elon feels preeetty (not really) confident that Tesla will reach 5 000 week by the end of the year. * Elon throws shade at US Intelligence agencies about not being able to keep secrets when talking about suppliers. * Harps on suppliers being able to deliver but also admits he is sometimes too optimistic. Some number of people will always be late all it takes is 1% and Tesla has to make those parts manually at great cost or slow down the production rate. Great cost could be 10x 20x 30x more. * Parts need delivered parts need built into cars and cars need delivered—all of that goes into that goal of 5 000 week * According to financial plan no capital raise needed for Model 3 but it s really close to the edge. Elon says that s probably not the best thing for shareholders so it makes sense to raise capital to reduce risk. Did not give a timeline for potential capital raise. * From the very beginning of Model 3 costing was front and center and key of every discussion. Part by part basis looking at physical commodities in that part reasonable fabrication etc. Volumetric efficiency at the Gigafactory is a huge factor. * Solar City was a cash generator. * Deferments from trust with suppliers so they ve been able to stretch out payables to more favorable terms. Average is now (?) 59 days. * Beating the ZEV dead horse. Elon thinks California should do more to support Tesla. ZEV credits are not important at scale will have almost no impact on Model 3. * Elon not sure if makes sense to show final version of Model 3 before start of production initial set of cars goes to company employees for good feedback loop. At least a few months maybe even July before revealing final version. More polish and refinements a few more details—I guess in some ways it will be a lot better. * If 60-70 kWh average pack size possible and Gigafactory 1 could eventually support around 1 000 000 million vehicles a year and 30GWh of storage. Thinks storage will grow at twice the rate of automotive. * Currently think they can have a 500 000 vehicles in total next year is the most likely outcome and with a couple more years getting to a million units seems like most likely outcome. * Deepak s return is long term not interim. * Solar Tiles R& D will look cute next to Model 3 & Gigafactory * Customer configurations for Model 3 to public will be pretty close to production (3-4 months away) but it will be open internally to employee orders sooner (leaks plz) * Building out the stamping facility in Fremont now it will be running well in advance of Model 3 but real question is how long will it take to work out bugs. Elon will be personally there. * Elon doesn t expect the stamping line to be a potential schedule problem but rather issues they aren t aware of yet. * Not much to say about updates with Panasonic Elon wants to keep powder dry (I missed what product(s) this was regarding) * Ramp from 5k week to 10k week will be easier than 0k to 5k. Better for capex to make the line go faster vs making another line. Elon can t imagine capex being more than 70% of 0 to 5 to get from 5 to 10. * Elon laughing about not being able to fit people in the building and says parking is one of his biggest nightmares. * Missed some stuff at the end about capex cashflow and margins from Model 3. Signing off cheers everyone. | What s the likelihood they announce the other round of fundraising they d talked about in the past and thoughts on the impact on the stock if they do as the uninformed forget realise it was always on the cards? | 133 | 2 | 899 |
5viqis | 227 | Tesla Q4 full year 2016 financial results and conference call (5:30pm UTC-4) [Official thread] Please keep all posts related to the earnings shareholders letter and conference call in this post. I will add the shareholders letter here as soon as it becomes available which should be a few minutes after market close. * [Tesla Conference Call](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm) * [Tesla shareholder letter](http: files.shareholder.com downloads ABEA-4CW8X0 3943965853x0x929284 22C29259-6C19-41AC-9CAB-899D148F323D TSLA_Update_Letter_2016-4Q.pdf) ______________________________ Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its fourth quarter and full year 2016 financial results today after market close. As usual the release of the results will be followed by **a conference call and Q& A with Tesla s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4)**. Now here s what to expect on Wednesday: **Deliveries** The company already disclosed its delivery number for the last quarter and the full year: 22 200 delivered and 24 882 produced in Q4 full-year deliveries 76 230 slightly below expectations of 80 000. https: i.imgur.com mGzA203.jpg **Revenue** Wall Street s revenue consensus is $2.201 billion for the quarter while Estimize the financial estimate crowdsourcing website predicts $2.243 billion in revenue. That s down from Tesla s actual revenue of $2.298 billion during the last quarter and up from $1.747 billion in revenue in Q4 2015. The predictions for Tesla s revenue over the past 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com nLyJlWY.jpg As you can see Tesla beat both Wall Street and Estimize consensus for revenue over the last two quarters. This quarter s revenue estimates are just slightly below last quarter s result which makes sense since Tesla s vehicle deliveries are down by a couple thousand vehicles but they also deployed several important new Powerpack projects and some of SolarCity revenue should be accounted for though it s not clear how that will be accounted at this point. **Earnings** Earnings per share or rather loss per share is expected to thread really close to 0 for the quarter and an overall loss for the full year. The Wall Street consensus is a loss of $0.13 per share for the quarter while Estimize s prediction is a slight loss of $0.05 per share. Earnings per share over the last 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com lWjtRTi.jpg Of course last quarter s estimates were quite wrong since Tesla surprised everyone with a gain and while a surprise is not out of the question this quarter again it would be even more surprising than in Q3 because of the delivery miss. **Other expectations for the shareholders letter and analyst call** Again the biggest thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is an update on Model 3 – more specifically a guidance for overall deliveries in 2017 including Model 3 deliveries. If Tesla is still on track to start deliveries this summer people will want to know how quickly they can be expected to ramp up to volume production. Company officials have so far been very vague on the subject. The best estimate was released by Musk as a guess of 100 000 to 200 000 units which most industry analysts don t believe to be possible. The other important thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is how Tesla will report ‘Tesla Energy and ‘SolarCity financials in its results. Of course they will also want an update on how the integration of SolarCity into Tesla has been going since the merger was approved just over 2 months ago. Again Tesla will release the results after market close today and management will hold a conference call with Q& A at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4). You can join on the call through Tesla s[ investor relations website](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm). | **Call ~~Summary~~ Notes that drag on way too long** * Jason Wheeler to leave Tesla in April to pursue public policy Deepak Ahuja will return as CFO * Adam Jonas asks about Elon s balance of time between Tesla and SpaceX Elon plans to stay with Tesla until he s kicked out. Potentially accelerated Mars mission thanks to Trump administration will not change his balance of time between companies. * Adam Jonas asks about Tesla offering insurance due to massively increased safety and John McNeill says they are piloting that program in Asia. Elon thinks insurance providers will do a good job adjusting appropriately thanks to safety improvements * Elon talks about Model 3 production simplicity compared to S and X 1 screen vs 2 screens 1.5km of wiring vs 3km no self-presenting door handles better suppliers compared to S and X and general amount of increased automation. * Also touched on Model 3 components produced at Gigafactory (did he say power electronics and chargers?) and significant engineering resources put into the factory rather than the car itself. * Elon touches on how production is only as fast as the slowest component so over time they are minimizing issues with these problematic suppliers. Elon bemoans being a public company because a small delay can significantly affect a single quarter. * re: less than expected revenue from Autopilot—Elon says there were challenges in transition from MobileEye to internal. They originally wanted to have both running at the same time but MobileEye refused to cooperate in that manner. They had to cross the Rubicon with Tesla Vision. Safety is their primary concern could have released high speed 3 months ago but want exhaustive testing process. Might get to 80mph next month. * Jason touches on increased effort for solar sales vs leasing reduced customer acquisition costs on solar nothing really specific here * Is the lack of second half numbers on S and X in the second half due to potential disruption from Model 3? JB says effectively says no not really. It s just a matter of when the s curve happens. * Any word on when configuration for Model 3 might open? Elon ignored this because he s pissed about Unions (hot take by me). * Unionization? Elon says there is a strong effort by the UAW. Elon will be posting blog update in the next day or two (Elon time) he wants to get it right. Injury rate is less than half of industry average. Including stock options compensation is by far the highest in the industry. He says there are only disadvantages to UAW and doesn t find it likely to occur. * Elon mentions how environmental regulations and subsidies have only come up briefly but his response is that he s OK with removing subsidies if its done across the board for fossil fuels. Administration did not give a response to that input. * Elon says if incentives disappeared tomorrow Tesla would have a competitive advantage. Touches on how ZEV credits are effectively worth 2x to Chevy compared to Tesla because Tesla sells so many EVs. Thinks it s ironic that getting rid of it would help Tesla. * Decline is deposits on balance sheet was from Signature Model X that had yet to be delivered. Jason says they are still in great shape on Model 3. Elon says they are still anti-selling Model 3 and Jason? says they don t want to make the line longer. * Model 3 will not be profitable on Day 1 early Model 3 will be horrible negative margins on Day 1. As they get closer to 5 000 week Elon expects gross margins close to S and X. Elon feels preeetty (not really) confident that Tesla will reach 5 000 week by the end of the year. * Elon throws shade at US Intelligence agencies about not being able to keep secrets when talking about suppliers. * Harps on suppliers being able to deliver but also admits he is sometimes too optimistic. Some number of people will always be late all it takes is 1% and Tesla has to make those parts manually at great cost or slow down the production rate. Great cost could be 10x 20x 30x more. * Parts need delivered parts need built into cars and cars need delivered—all of that goes into that goal of 5 000 week * According to financial plan no capital raise needed for Model 3 but it s really close to the edge. Elon says that s probably not the best thing for shareholders so it makes sense to raise capital to reduce risk. Did not give a timeline for potential capital raise. * From the very beginning of Model 3 costing was front and center and key of every discussion. Part by part basis looking at physical commodities in that part reasonable fabrication etc. Volumetric efficiency at the Gigafactory is a huge factor. * Solar City was a cash generator. * Deferments from trust with suppliers so they ve been able to stretch out payables to more favorable terms. Average is now (?) 59 days. * Beating the ZEV dead horse. Elon thinks California should do more to support Tesla. ZEV credits are not important at scale will have almost no impact on Model 3. * Elon not sure if makes sense to show final version of Model 3 before start of production initial set of cars goes to company employees for good feedback loop. At least a few months maybe even July before revealing final version. More polish and refinements a few more details—I guess in some ways it will be a lot better. * If 60-70 kWh average pack size possible and Gigafactory 1 could eventually support around 1 000 000 million vehicles a year and 30GWh of storage. Thinks storage will grow at twice the rate of automotive. * Currently think they can have a 500 000 vehicles in total next year is the most likely outcome and with a couple more years getting to a million units seems like most likely outcome. * Deepak s return is long term not interim. * Solar Tiles R& D will look cute next to Model 3 & Gigafactory * Customer configurations for Model 3 to public will be pretty close to production (3-4 months away) but it will be open internally to employee orders sooner (leaks plz) * Building out the stamping facility in Fremont now it will be running well in advance of Model 3 but real question is how long will it take to work out bugs. Elon will be personally there. * Elon doesn t expect the stamping line to be a potential schedule problem but rather issues they aren t aware of yet. * Not much to say about updates with Panasonic Elon wants to keep powder dry (I missed what product(s) this was regarding) * Ramp from 5k week to 10k week will be easier than 0k to 5k. Better for capex to make the line go faster vs making another line. Elon can t imagine capex being more than 70% of 0 to 5 to get from 5 to 10. * Elon laughing about not being able to fit people in the building and says parking is one of his biggest nightmares. * Missed some stuff at the end about capex cashflow and margins from Model 3. Signing off cheers everyone. | ir.tesla.com getting hammered | 133 | 2 | 900 |
5viqis | 227 | Tesla Q4 full year 2016 financial results and conference call (5:30pm UTC-4) [Official thread] Please keep all posts related to the earnings shareholders letter and conference call in this post. I will add the shareholders letter here as soon as it becomes available which should be a few minutes after market close. * [Tesla Conference Call](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm) * [Tesla shareholder letter](http: files.shareholder.com downloads ABEA-4CW8X0 3943965853x0x929284 22C29259-6C19-41AC-9CAB-899D148F323D TSLA_Update_Letter_2016-4Q.pdf) ______________________________ Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its fourth quarter and full year 2016 financial results today after market close. As usual the release of the results will be followed by **a conference call and Q& A with Tesla s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4)**. Now here s what to expect on Wednesday: **Deliveries** The company already disclosed its delivery number for the last quarter and the full year: 22 200 delivered and 24 882 produced in Q4 full-year deliveries 76 230 slightly below expectations of 80 000. https: i.imgur.com mGzA203.jpg **Revenue** Wall Street s revenue consensus is $2.201 billion for the quarter while Estimize the financial estimate crowdsourcing website predicts $2.243 billion in revenue. That s down from Tesla s actual revenue of $2.298 billion during the last quarter and up from $1.747 billion in revenue in Q4 2015. The predictions for Tesla s revenue over the past 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com nLyJlWY.jpg As you can see Tesla beat both Wall Street and Estimize consensus for revenue over the last two quarters. This quarter s revenue estimates are just slightly below last quarter s result which makes sense since Tesla s vehicle deliveries are down by a couple thousand vehicles but they also deployed several important new Powerpack projects and some of SolarCity revenue should be accounted for though it s not clear how that will be accounted at this point. **Earnings** Earnings per share or rather loss per share is expected to thread really close to 0 for the quarter and an overall loss for the full year. The Wall Street consensus is a loss of $0.13 per share for the quarter while Estimize s prediction is a slight loss of $0.05 per share. Earnings per share over the last 2 years – Estimize predictions in blue – Wall Street consensus in grey – Actual results in green: https: i.imgur.com lWjtRTi.jpg Of course last quarter s estimates were quite wrong since Tesla surprised everyone with a gain and while a surprise is not out of the question this quarter again it would be even more surprising than in Q3 because of the delivery miss. **Other expectations for the shareholders letter and analyst call** Again the biggest thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is an update on Model 3 – more specifically a guidance for overall deliveries in 2017 including Model 3 deliveries. If Tesla is still on track to start deliveries this summer people will want to know how quickly they can be expected to ramp up to volume production. Company officials have so far been very vague on the subject. The best estimate was released by Musk as a guess of 100 000 to 200 000 units which most industry analysts don t believe to be possible. The other important thing shareholders and analysts will be looking for is how Tesla will report ‘Tesla Energy and ‘SolarCity financials in its results. Of course they will also want an update on how the integration of SolarCity into Tesla has been going since the merger was approved just over 2 months ago. Again Tesla will release the results after market close today and management will hold a conference call with Q& A at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time - UTC-4). You can join on the call through Tesla s[ investor relations website](http: ir.tesla.com events.cfm). | **Call ~~Summary~~ Notes that drag on way too long** * Jason Wheeler to leave Tesla in April to pursue public policy Deepak Ahuja will return as CFO * Adam Jonas asks about Elon s balance of time between Tesla and SpaceX Elon plans to stay with Tesla until he s kicked out. Potentially accelerated Mars mission thanks to Trump administration will not change his balance of time between companies. * Adam Jonas asks about Tesla offering insurance due to massively increased safety and John McNeill says they are piloting that program in Asia. Elon thinks insurance providers will do a good job adjusting appropriately thanks to safety improvements * Elon talks about Model 3 production simplicity compared to S and X 1 screen vs 2 screens 1.5km of wiring vs 3km no self-presenting door handles better suppliers compared to S and X and general amount of increased automation. * Also touched on Model 3 components produced at Gigafactory (did he say power electronics and chargers?) and significant engineering resources put into the factory rather than the car itself. * Elon touches on how production is only as fast as the slowest component so over time they are minimizing issues with these problematic suppliers. Elon bemoans being a public company because a small delay can significantly affect a single quarter. * re: less than expected revenue from Autopilot—Elon says there were challenges in transition from MobileEye to internal. They originally wanted to have both running at the same time but MobileEye refused to cooperate in that manner. They had to cross the Rubicon with Tesla Vision. Safety is their primary concern could have released high speed 3 months ago but want exhaustive testing process. Might get to 80mph next month. * Jason touches on increased effort for solar sales vs leasing reduced customer acquisition costs on solar nothing really specific here * Is the lack of second half numbers on S and X in the second half due to potential disruption from Model 3? JB says effectively says no not really. It s just a matter of when the s curve happens. * Any word on when configuration for Model 3 might open? Elon ignored this because he s pissed about Unions (hot take by me). * Unionization? Elon says there is a strong effort by the UAW. Elon will be posting blog update in the next day or two (Elon time) he wants to get it right. Injury rate is less than half of industry average. Including stock options compensation is by far the highest in the industry. He says there are only disadvantages to UAW and doesn t find it likely to occur. * Elon mentions how environmental regulations and subsidies have only come up briefly but his response is that he s OK with removing subsidies if its done across the board for fossil fuels. Administration did not give a response to that input. * Elon says if incentives disappeared tomorrow Tesla would have a competitive advantage. Touches on how ZEV credits are effectively worth 2x to Chevy compared to Tesla because Tesla sells so many EVs. Thinks it s ironic that getting rid of it would help Tesla. * Decline is deposits on balance sheet was from Signature Model X that had yet to be delivered. Jason says they are still in great shape on Model 3. Elon says they are still anti-selling Model 3 and Jason? says they don t want to make the line longer. * Model 3 will not be profitable on Day 1 early Model 3 will be horrible negative margins on Day 1. As they get closer to 5 000 week Elon expects gross margins close to S and X. Elon feels preeetty (not really) confident that Tesla will reach 5 000 week by the end of the year. * Elon throws shade at US Intelligence agencies about not being able to keep secrets when talking about suppliers. * Harps on suppliers being able to deliver but also admits he is sometimes too optimistic. Some number of people will always be late all it takes is 1% and Tesla has to make those parts manually at great cost or slow down the production rate. Great cost could be 10x 20x 30x more. * Parts need delivered parts need built into cars and cars need delivered—all of that goes into that goal of 5 000 week * According to financial plan no capital raise needed for Model 3 but it s really close to the edge. Elon says that s probably not the best thing for shareholders so it makes sense to raise capital to reduce risk. Did not give a timeline for potential capital raise. * From the very beginning of Model 3 costing was front and center and key of every discussion. Part by part basis looking at physical commodities in that part reasonable fabrication etc. Volumetric efficiency at the Gigafactory is a huge factor. * Solar City was a cash generator. * Deferments from trust with suppliers so they ve been able to stretch out payables to more favorable terms. Average is now (?) 59 days. * Beating the ZEV dead horse. Elon thinks California should do more to support Tesla. ZEV credits are not important at scale will have almost no impact on Model 3. * Elon not sure if makes sense to show final version of Model 3 before start of production initial set of cars goes to company employees for good feedback loop. At least a few months maybe even July before revealing final version. More polish and refinements a few more details—I guess in some ways it will be a lot better. * If 60-70 kWh average pack size possible and Gigafactory 1 could eventually support around 1 000 000 million vehicles a year and 30GWh of storage. Thinks storage will grow at twice the rate of automotive. * Currently think they can have a 500 000 vehicles in total next year is the most likely outcome and with a couple more years getting to a million units seems like most likely outcome. * Deepak s return is long term not interim. * Solar Tiles R& D will look cute next to Model 3 & Gigafactory * Customer configurations for Model 3 to public will be pretty close to production (3-4 months away) but it will be open internally to employee orders sooner (leaks plz) * Building out the stamping facility in Fremont now it will be running well in advance of Model 3 but real question is how long will it take to work out bugs. Elon will be personally there. * Elon doesn t expect the stamping line to be a potential schedule problem but rather issues they aren t aware of yet. * Not much to say about updates with Panasonic Elon wants to keep powder dry (I missed what product(s) this was regarding) * Ramp from 5k week to 10k week will be easier than 0k to 5k. Better for capex to make the line go faster vs making another line. Elon can t imagine capex being more than 70% of 0 to 5 to get from 5 to 10. * Elon laughing about not being able to fit people in the building and says parking is one of his biggest nightmares. * Missed some stuff at the end about capex cashflow and margins from Model 3. Signing off cheers everyone. | Tesla is expecting to deliver 47 000-50 000 cars in the next two quarters. Doesn t this mean stagnated growth? They delivered ~47k in the last two quarters... | 133 | 2 | 901 |
5vk44v | 151 | Just went into a Tesla store and got a T-Shirt! Since I am in love with Tesla but never had the chance to see one near by I took the chance and went into our local Tesla store. I was surprised since I didn t even know that we got a store here (Germany). So I went into that Store and asked if I am allowed to see the Tesla Model S. Since I am a student I can t afford a Tesla car or a car in general but still I was allowed to check the Model S entirely see all it s features and the seller even answered all my questions. In the end I wanted to check how much these Tesla cloths are since I didn t want to leave the store without anything. Those prices were even too high for me atm (starting by $40). The sellers agreed and gave me a brand new Tesla Shirt as a present!!! Best day of my life. | In future news: In reporting earnings for Q1 2017 TSLA missed making a profit by $40. Elon said he was disappointed in the results and that almost all of the employees had worked really hard to make it successful quarter. | Fellow German here I went to our local store a year ago for a student project. We just e- mailed them and the service person took a whole hour to clear all our questions and we even got a test drive! (project was related to autonomous driving so we had a good excuse to go visit Tesla) Didn t even know they sell Tesla swag there another good excuse to go back. Perfect… | 88 | 2 | 902 |
5vk44v | 151 | Just went into a Tesla store and got a T-Shirt! Since I am in love with Tesla but never had the chance to see one near by I took the chance and went into our local Tesla store. I was surprised since I didn t even know that we got a store here (Germany). So I went into that Store and asked if I am allowed to see the Tesla Model S. Since I am a student I can t afford a Tesla car or a car in general but still I was allowed to check the Model S entirely see all it s features and the seller even answered all my questions. In the end I wanted to check how much these Tesla cloths are since I didn t want to leave the store without anything. Those prices were even too high for me atm (starting by $40). The sellers agreed and gave me a brand new Tesla Shirt as a present!!! Best day of my life. | In future news: In reporting earnings for Q1 2017 TSLA missed making a profit by $40. Elon said he was disappointed in the results and that almost all of the employees had worked really hard to make it successful quarter. | Best time to score something at a Tesla store...is when they are not busy. So middle of the week early in the quarter | 88 | 2 | 903 |
5vk44v | 151 | Just went into a Tesla store and got a T-Shirt! Since I am in love with Tesla but never had the chance to see one near by I took the chance and went into our local Tesla store. I was surprised since I didn t even know that we got a store here (Germany). So I went into that Store and asked if I am allowed to see the Tesla Model S. Since I am a student I can t afford a Tesla car or a car in general but still I was allowed to check the Model S entirely see all it s features and the seller even answered all my questions. In the end I wanted to check how much these Tesla cloths are since I didn t want to leave the store without anything. Those prices were even too high for me atm (starting by $40). The sellers agreed and gave me a brand new Tesla Shirt as a present!!! Best day of my life. | In future news: In reporting earnings for Q1 2017 TSLA missed making a profit by $40. Elon said he was disappointed in the results and that almost all of the employees had worked really hard to make it successful quarter. | So cool always have wanted some Tesla merch! | 88 | 3 | 904 |
5vvzpn | 38 | Pushing back the Model 3 final reveal could be a really good sign. Do you agree? Based on the Q4 investors call we know the part 3 of the reveal won t happen until quite close to production start. I am 20% worried as this could mean they have some wrinkles to iron out and don t want to share anything more prior to that. However 80% of me thinks it could be a very good sign. This is mostly based on an assumption that some features of the Model 3 will be better than what can currently be found on S or X. So by announcing this too early they would negatively impact Model S and X sales. Here are some ideas: 1. HUD. Elon said on the call that Model 3 will only have one screen. There have also been a lot of discussions and rumors about Model 3 s minimalist interior design. To me it s an almost 100% confirmation of the HUD because you do need at least some basic info displayed in front of your eyes (speed battery level etc.). 2. Battery pack. We know Model 3 will benefit from improved battery cell and pack produced in the Gigafactory. Lower cost better energy density will result in better relative performance. Now Elon said multiple times that Model S and X will always be the most advanced premium models that will get all the new tech first. I think it would be quite an upset for many S X owners if model 3 came out superior in some ways. More importantly announcing Model 3 with some features that are absent (or less advanced) in Model S X would hurt sales of those more expensive models. That s because people would know that those new features would very soon be added to Model S X so most of potential buyers would wait until the refreshed models are released. Also the queue for Model 3 is already very long and Tesla said they don t want to make it longer. Delaying the reveal supports the idea that Model 3 could make some potential S X buyers reconsider and wait for Model 3 instead. Given all the above I believe Tesla will implement and announce improvements to Model S X before or at the time of Model 3 final reveal. And that s why I believe the delay is good. Do you agree? | They are holding back on the final reveal because if they told everyone today what the final reveal was they would get another half million preorders and they don t care to have that much pressure on them. If the production dates slip that s a million intolerant customers to piss off. It also gives their competition less time to copycat some of their innovations. | It would make sense to push it back somewhat for that reason but at some point the prototypes will have to hit public roadways for testing purposes and you know every Tesla geek will have their cell phones out to take pictures and video when that happens. In other words even if they push the reveal back to the start of full production I think the cat will be out of the bag before then. | 78 | 4 | 905 |
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